A Practical Treatise on Rail-Roads, and Internal Communication in General. Containing an Account of the Performances of Different Locomotives Engines at and Subsequent to the Liverpool Contest; Upwards of Two Hundred and Sixty Experiments; With Tables of

Original cloth backed boards, rebacked, with old backstrip laid down, xxiii, 530 pp.. Corners and paper spine label a bit worn, normal aging, book ad on front pastedown; otherwise a very good copy. In his introduction to the first edition, which was published in 1825, the author points out that not enough systematic evaluation of the merits of railroads has been done, and he viewed his work as a hopeful step in that direction. At the time of the publication of a second edition, in1832, Wood felt railroads were still in their infancy, but some progress had been made. He suggest that a local railroad between Stockton and Darlington had done a good job of overcoming some, but not all, of the reservations people had about railroads. While he felt that evidence clearly indicates that railroads were better than horses for transportation of goods and people, not enough had been done to move this along. His work provides considerable data and information toward this end, as well as some interesting illustrations to present the case. The second edition contains eight folding plates, and one folding chart (complete). Three of the folding plates illustrate different types of locomotive engines. (Inventory #: 100603)