Railway Engineering

Excerpt from Railway Engineering: Or, Field Work Preparatory to the Construction Railways; Containing the Original and Most Approved Methods of Laying Out Railway Curves, and of Setting Out the Widths of Cuttings and Embankments, Etc;; A General Table for the Calculation of Earthworks Of
The matter contained in the following pages, with the exception of a few additions and improvements, was drawn up about twenty-five years ago for private use; its publication, at the present time, having been delayed at least two years, for reasons, which it will be unnecessary here to state.
The chief part of Section I., On the Different Methods of laying out Railway Curves on the ground, was communicated to my friend the late professor Leybourn, of the R. M. College, Sandhurst, in 1824, and afterwards published by him in the "Gentleman's Diary;" these Methods being adapted to all cases that can occur in practice, as well as to the different degrees of scientific skill possessed by surveyors and engineers. The Constructions, Formulae, and Methods of laying out Compound, Serpentine, and Deviation Curves, with Tables of Offsets for Railway Curves, were also placed in his hands; but his death prevented their publication.
As these Methods of laying out Railway Curves, especially two of them, have been generally adopted in practice, from the commencement of the Stockton and Darlington Railway to the present time, and as several other gentlemen, during the last two or three years, have published on the same subject, most of whom have given either all or part of my methods, I think it right to claim the Invention of them. See Remarks on the Invention of the Methods of laying out Railway Curves, p. 29.
The gentlemen that have published on this subject are, Law, Castle, Rankine, and Hill (see page 31). I have lately seen similar publications by Heald, Brodie, Gardner, May, and others. Almost all these authors give their formulae and rules for laying out curves without investigation; some of them have given an unnecessary profusion of formulae, which involve the subject they pretend to explain, in such a degree of obscurity as must be very perplexing to students, and repulsive to those engineers who have been accustomed to use my methods, in which I anticipated, above twenty years ago, all that has since been done by these authors, at least as far as real practical utility is concerned.
In Section II. I have given Methods of setting out the widths of ground for Railway Cuttings, on horizontal, laterally sloping, and uneven ground, with original Formulae connected therewith; superseding, in most cases, the unscientific methods of approximation given for the same purpose used by many engineers. This Section concludes with methods of calculating the quantity of land required for projected and intended Railways.
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