Philadelphia Paper - Discussion on Steel Rails. Philadelphia Meeting

years ago upon the effect of having the rails always rolled in the same direction, and also of having them rolled backwards and forwards, and showed that under the latter course there were of necesshy weak spots somewhere near the centre of the rail, yet in all this discussion the methods of rolling have been passed by almost in silence. Mr.. Sandberg in his paper mentions the idea of using a regietering dynamometer attached to the punching machines, and of det.erminit~g the quality of the metal by the resistance which is shown. I think the' first idea of this kind was published by Professor Langley, then of Pittsburgh, who, while making some investigations for Mesrs. Miller, Metcalf and Parkin, announceti as tile result of a series of dynamometric experiments that abrasive resistance was the term which should be wed in regard to steels of different wearing qualities. I have had extremely delicate dynamometers attached to the instruments of precision with which I am making the iuvestigation on the fatigue of metals, and hope soon to communicate the results of the iovegtigation- made with them to the Institute. I wish again to call attention to the fact that we are wing the words " hardener " and " hardness " without any real idea of the meaning of these words. When we say hard and soft, as we have hen constantly doing during this discussion, is it quite sure that every one has exactly the same meaning in his mind ? Certainly, when hard is used in distinction from soft*, we mean not the capacity of wear, but the capacity of resistance to peuetration, to fracture, or some other resistance, and do not always meau the capacity of resistance to abrasion or crushing, which the discussion would sometimes seem to imply were the only qualitiw requisite to constitute a god rail. J. W. Cloud, Altoona, Pa. : I would call the attention of the Institute to the title of Dr. Dudley's interesting and valuable paper, —" The Wearing Capacity of Steel Rails in relation to their Chemical Composition and Physical Properties." Here are two separate and distinct questions: lst, The wearing capacity of steel rails in relation to their chemical content; and 2d, the wearing capacity of steel rails in relation to their physical properties. The discussion has been almost exclusively confined to the former question, on which there may be many differences of opinion in matters of detail without greatig affecting the result. The latter