Part 11

Is there any particular circumstance, in the formation of roads, more particularly applicable to the immediate neighbourhood of London?—In the neighbourhood of London, and of several other large towns, the materials that are to be readily procured, are of too tender and brittle a nature to endure the wear of the heavy carriages; I therefore am of opinion, that it would be proper to pave the sides of all the principal entrances into London; but not the middle, as has been done on the Commercial road and Borough Stones’-end road. My reasons for preferring the sides being paved are, that it is next to impossible to compel the carters to keep upon the pavement in the middle of the road, in too many instances; the fear of damage, from the swift going carriages, occasions them, either to draw their carts close to the sides, and walk upon the footpaths, or what is worse to leave their horses in the middle, beyond a train of carriages. The sides being paved, would enable one of those trains of carriages to enter London on one side of the road, and go out of it on the other, without many occasions to turn out of their tracks: which keeping nearly to the same tracks, upon a well-paved road, would not be prejudicial; but on a road formed of gravel is entirely ruinous.

Do you consider that the plan of rolling the roads in the neighbourhood, of London, might be advantageously introduced?—The centre of the roads I should recommend to remain covered with clean-sifted and picked gravel, having as many as possible of its large, roundish and smooth stones broken by means of a hammer before the time of laying it on the road, and that an heavy iron roller, of from four to five feet diameter, and not less, might be advantageously used in the first settling down of this gravel; a small roller, such as I believe to have been tried in the neighbourhood of London, very heavily loaded on its top, might have a tendency to force the loose gravel before it so as not easily to be drawn or to mount on to the gravel driven before it without crushing the flints. I will add, I am of opinion, that a roller could not be beneficially used upon a road at any other times but after new coating it with gravel, or after a frost or the sticking of materials to the wheels may have loosened up the materials.

Do you consider that the present regulations in regard to exemptions of tolls to waggons with broad wheels, are justified by sound policy?—In my opinion, those exemptions have wholly originated in mistaken principles, and that no wheels wider than about six inches are now, in fact, used upon the roads, owing to the general and gross deceptions which the waggoners practise as to the breadth of surface that their wheels roll on; and that if by any more efficient regulations, the users of broad wheels were compelled to roll the breadths of surface, which the laws contemplate, all such wheels would be immediately disused, from the great additional force of draught which broad wheels occasion during the average state of all the roads.

Are you of opinion that any regulation by statute, for substituting cylindrical for conical wheels, would remedy that evil, or justify an exemption from toll?—As far as I have observed, there are no conical wheels in use: all the wheels are rounding or barrelled, and it is comparatively an immaterial circumstance whether they approach the form of a cone or a cylinder, while they remain so rounding or barrelled, because their enormous loads roll on a very small portion of the surface of all those broad wheels. I think that six-inch cylindrical wheels, or under, are the most practicable and useful, provided the projecting nails are most rigidly prohibited, which I believe can never be done but by a penalty per nail upon the wheelers who put in those nails, and upon the drivers of the carriages who used such roughly-nailed wheels.

Are you of opinion that the penalties now fixed by law upon over-weights are regulated upon good principles?—I consider the whole system as to penalties upon over-weights generally bad; the present regulations seem to me framed upon mistaken principles, and are the source of very great impositions.

In what manner might the penalties and tolls upon carts and waggons be best fixed?—It is not practicable very simply or in this way to state any one scale that would be generally applicable for each breadth of wheels: below six inches, there should be a rate fixed, which would apply to ordinary or gate-tolls, and at the weighing machines additional tolls, which I will call machine-tolls, should be levied upon all carriages which exceeded the weight, to be regulated in an increasing scale for each breadth of wheel, so as very greatly to discourage, but not ruinously to prohibit the occasional carrying of large weights upon any wheels.

You are not, then, of opinion that it would be right to do away the regulations altogether in respect to the weights, and apportion the tolls only to the number of horses?—By no means.

Are you acquainted with any particular weighing machine, which obviates the common objection in regard to impositions by the machine-keepers?—I am; Mr. Salmon, of Woburn, many years ago, contrived, and had a patent (which has expired) for a weighing machine, intended to prevent impositions on the carters: the machine being so contrived as to be locked up from the machine-keeper, and accessible only to the surveyor, and so as to exhibit the exact weight by a revolving index, like the hands of a clock, which are called clock-face indexes; a great number of these weighing machines have long been in use in the kingdom, some in the immediate environs of London: by looking at the index of which machine, the carter, or any passer by, may see that the machine, before the carriage is drawn upon its weigh-bridge, is in just balance; and all the time the carriage remains upon the weigh-bridge, the index exhibits the weight, so that the carter can take it down; and at the same time the dial-plate is made an abstract of the law, by there being written against each of the weights fixed, the breadth of the carriage wheel, and the season to which that weight is applicable at the commencement of penalties for over-weights.

Can you inform the Committee of the expense of a machine of this description?—I cannot; but it is trifling, compared with its advantages, and an index may be added to a machine upon the common principle, using weights, placed in a scale; they may be applied to any good machine already in use.

Are you of opinion there exists any necessity for limiting the number of horses in carts and wagons, upon roads where there are weighing-machines?—I am of opinion not; and even doubt the propriety of calculating the gate-toll by the number of horses which draw the carriage. Upon private or parish roads, where no machines are erected, there seems, however, no other mode of regulating or preventing excessive loads being carried, to the ruin of the roads, than limiting the number of horses; but in case of the practice becoming general, which already prevails in many of the towns in the middle of England, of there being a weighing-machine, kept by a cottager, at all the principal entrances at the town, at which he is authorized (by the local magistrates, I believe,) to collect a small toll for each weighing, for those who voluntarily apply to him, by which means all loads passing into and out of such towns, may be, and the greater part of them are now, weighed; and if this were adopted in the environs of London, (with the addition of a yard and a warehouse, where a carter who has inadvertently taken up too large a load, either of dung, furniture, or other articles, of the weights of which he could not be accurately informed, may learn the same; and where, upon the result of this weighing, if it should be discovered that he had much too large a load, he could there throw off and deposit a part of it, either to abandon it if of small value like dung, or to take it up from the warehouse, at a future time,) these entrance weighing-machines would remove the only valid objection to weighing the loads of manure going out of London, by which the roads are at present more cut up and destroyed, than by any other description of carriages.

Will you have the goodness to state the principle upon which you prefer that the tolls should be regulated entirely by weights and breadth of wheels, without regard to the number of horses drawing?—Because nothing can be more vague or unsatisfactory, than the latter mode of defining weights, or preventing the carrying of excessive loads, because horses are of such very different degrees of size, condition and strength, and the humanity or otherwise of their drivers are so very different; but more on account of the very great inequality of the different roads of the kingdom, which this general regulation is now made to apply to, as to the number and steepness of the hills: the precautions that have been used, of setting up posts upon the tops and bottoms of those steeps, to define where extra horses may be used, are entirely become useless, comparatively, none of the hills now remain, to any length, with so great a degree of steepness, as to cause it to be worth any one’s while to keep horses stationed there, for the purpose of assisting heavy carriages up those hills for hire; still less has it occurred that any waggoner has spare horses following his waggon, for which he must pay tolls, in order to avail himself of this useless permission, to use any number of horses up the steep hills.

Are you of opinion that stage-coaches require, or would admit of any regulation with respect to their wheels or weights?—I am clearly of opinion, that they would not; for in travelling, when it has happened that I could not get a seat on the front of the coach, I have, through many long days, carefully attended to the impression made by the wheels of the carriages upon which I have been travelling (when they have been among the heaviest loaded coaches) and have compared these impressions with those of the carts and waggons, particularly broad-wheeled ones, which we met; from which observations, and other more particular ones, I am of opinion, that the injury done to the roads by the coaches, compared with their utility and the tolls they pay, is not such as to justify any legal restraint on their wheels or weights.

Are you of opinion, that it would be attended with any advantage to the roads, to encourage, by any regulation or exemption from tolls, the use of carriages, varying the length of their axles, so as to prevent their running in the same tracks?—I am of opinion it would be very beneficial, and have particularly so stated to the Board of Agriculture, with an example of the tolls over a new road, which are so regulated in Derbyshire: in addition to which, some inducement in the abatement of tolls, might be made to those carriages, which now generally use single shafts like the farmers’ carts and waggons, on their adopting double shafts, so that all their horses may draw in pairs; this being applicable even to three-horse carts, as far as concerns the two foremost. Stage-coaches, for the reasons here alluded to, as they do all draw in pairs, and very seldom follow in any previous and deep rut, do far less damage to the roads than otherwise would happen; their springs also, and swiftness of motion, contributing, very materially, to lessening their wear of the road.

Are you of opinion that any advantage would be derived from the general commutation of statute duty?—I have long been of opinion that the whole principle of statute duty, as now regulated, is erroneous; labour in kind should entirely cease: and the surveyor collect a more equable rate on all property in his township; the present regulations for calling out the teams and making of a road rate, are so complicated, as to be above the capacity of the majority of parish surveyors, who in most or all instances collect the rates for the turnpike roads as well as the private roads.

Will you state your opinion of the statute labour, as it particularly applies to turnpike roads?—In all the local road acts which I have examined, one half of the statute duty of each township is apportioned to each toll road which passes through any part or corner of that township, which in innumerable instances, is very highly prejudicial; a due proportion of the fair road rate, as already mentioned, should be payable to each toll road, where there are more than one in the township, in proportion (or nearly so, as the quarter sessions might order) to all the lengths of all the roads within the township which it contributes to repair.

From your observation of the different roads throughout the kingdom, do you think that important advantages would be derived from their being placed under skilful surveyors, acting for large districts?—At present, the separate trusts are so exceedingly different in extent, many of them extending only three, four and five miles, while others have fifty or a hundred miles of road under their trusts, that it seems impracticable, in many trusts, to employ a very skilful and competent surveyor, on account of the great and unnecessary expense that would be incurred on the short lengths of road; but if the legislature should see it right to enact the appointment of thoroughly competent district surveyors, who might have the superintendence and control, to a defined extent, over the officers of the local trustees of turnpike roads, as well as over the surveyors of the parish roads within their districts, the most important advantages would result.

Do you not think great inconvenience arises from the great numbers generally found forming commissioners of turnpike trusts?—From my own experience, I cannot say that I have seen any evil from the great number of trustees, on the contrary, the greatest mismanagement that I have seen in any roads, has arisen from the clergymen of the districts being almost the only acting trustees; the greatest and most active land owners frequently having no share in such trusts: the late duke of Bedford, for instance, not being a trustee in the vicinity of Woburn for many years after he took an active part in improving the district.

_James Walker_, Esq. called in; and Examined.

You are a civil engineer?—I am.

In the course of your experience have you turned your attention to the making and repairing of roads?—I have been employed in the making and repairing of several roads, and the regulation of others.

In what part of the kingdom have you been employed, and what observations have occurred to you upon this subject?—The whole of the works executed under the Commercial Road, the East India Road, the Barking Road, and the Tilbury Road Acts, have been under my direction, as well as the roads made under the Bridge and Dock Companies, for which I have been engineer. The Commercial Road, which is between the West India Docks and London is referred to in the report of a former Committee on highways, as particularly well fitted for heavy traffic; that road is seventy feet wide, and is divided into two footways, each ten feet, and a carriage road fifty feet wide, of which twenty feet in the middle is paved with granite. I have a section of the form of this road (No. 1, in the annexed plan.) The East India Dock branch of the Commercial Road is also seventy feet wide, ten feet of which is paved with granite. I have prepared also a section of that road (No. 2, in the plan.) The traffic upon the Commercial Road, both up and down, is very great, and necessarily required a width of paving sufficient for two carriages to pass upon it. I am quite sure that the expense of this road would have been very much greater, probably much more than doubled if it had not been paved, and that the carriage of goods would also here been much more expensive; indeed it would have been next to impossible to have carried the present loads upon a gravelled road. The road has been paved for about sixteen years, and the expense of supporting it has been small, although the stage-coaches generally, as well as almost all the carts and waggons, go upon it; while the expense of the gravelled part has been comparatively great. During the thirteen years that the East India Dock branch has been paved, the paving has not cost 20_l._ in repairs, although the waggons, each weighing about five tons, with the whole of the East India produce, which is brought from the docks by land, have passed all that time in one track upon it, and a great deal of heavy country traffic for the last eight years, when a communication was formed with the county of Essex. The advantage of paving part of a road where the traffic is great, and the materials of making roads bad or expensive, is not confined to improving the conveyance for heavy goods and reducing the horses’ labour; but as the paving is always preferred for heavy carriages, the sides of a road are left for light carriages, and are kept in much better repair than otherwise they could possibly be. It is not, I am sure, overstating the advantage of the paving, but rather otherwise, to say, that taking the year through, two horses will do more work, with the same labour to themselves, upon a paved road than three upon a good gravelled road, if the traffic upon the gravelled road is at all considerable, and if the effect of this, in point of expense, is brought into figures, the saving of the expense of carriage will be found to be very great when compared with the cost of the paving. If the annual tonnage upon the Commercial Road is taken at 250,000 tons, and at the rate of only 3_s._ per ton from the Docks, it could not upon a gravelled road be done under 4_s._ 6_d._ say however 4_s._ or 1_s._ per ton difference, making a saving of 12,500_l._, or nearly the whole expense of the paving in one year. I think I am under the mark in all these figures, and I am convinced therefore that the introduction of paving would, in many cases, be productive of great advantage, by improving the gravel road, reducing the expense of repairs, and causing a saving of horses’ labour much beyond what there is, I believe, any idea of. The expense of a ton of Aberdeen granite paving-stones laid in London, or in any similar situation, including laying, and every expense, is about 25_s._; the cost of the same weight of gravel is from 3_s._ 6_d._ to 5_s._ The cost of granite paving, 9 inches deep, is from 8_s._ 6_d._ to 10_s._ 6_d._ per superficial yard, or from 750_l._ to 920_l._ per mile for every yard in width. Guernsey granite is harder and more durable than Aberdeen granite, but is more expensive by about 10 per cent. and I think is this much better. Some stone of very good quality from near Greenock, has been used lately upon the Commercial Road, it is cheaper than Aberdeen, and appears to be very durable. The requisites for forming a good paving are to have the stones properly squared and shaped, not as wedges, but nearly as rectangular prisms; to sort them into classes according to their sizes, so as to prevent unequal sinking, which is always the effect of stones, or rows of stones, of unequal sizes being mixed together; to have a foundation properly consolidated before the road is begun to be paved, and to have the stones laid with a close joint, the courses being kept at right angles from the direction of the sides, and in perfectly straight lines, the joints carefully broken, that is, so that the joint between two stones in any one course shall not be in a line with, or opposite to a joint in any of the two courses adjoining. After the stones are laid they are to be well rammed, and such of the stones as appear to ram loose, should be taken out and replaced by others; after this the joints are to be filled with fine gravel, and if it can be done conveniently, the stability of the work will be increased by well watering at night the part that has been done during the day, and ramming it over again next morning. The surface of the pavement is then to be covered with an inch or so of fine gravel, that the joints may be always kept full, and that the wheels may not come in contact with the stones while they are at all loose in their places. Attention to these points will very much increase both the smoothness and durability of the paving. I have found great advantage from filling up, or, as it is called, grouting the joints with lime-water, which finds its way into the gravel between and under the stones, and forms the whole into a solid concreted mass. The purpose served by the lime might also be effectually answered by mixing a little of the borings or chippings of iron, or small scraps of iron hoop, with the gravel used in filling up the joints of the paving. The water would very soon create, an oxide of iron, and form the gravel into a species of rock. I have seen a piece of rusty hoop taken from under water, to which the gravel had so connected itself, for four or five inches round the hoop, as not to be separated without a smart blow of a hammer. And the cast-iron pipes which are laid in moist gravel soon exhibit the same tendency.