11. Railways can’t go over the “hump” caused by the curve of the Earth

“A  surveyor and engineer of thirty years published in the Birmingham Weekly Mercury stated, “I am thoroughly acquainted with the theory and practice of civil engineering. However bigoted some of our professors may be in the theory of surveying according to the prescribed rules, yet it is well known amongst us that such theoretical measurements are INCAPABLE OF ANY PRACTICAL ILLUSTRATION. All our locomotives are designed to run on what may be regarded as TRUE LEVELS or FLATS. There are, of course, partial inclines or gradients here and there, but they are always accurately defined and must be carefully traversed. But anything approaching to eight inches in the mile, increasing as the square of the distance, COULD NOT BE WORKED BY ANY ENGINE THAT WAS EVER YET CONSTRUCTED. Taking one station with another all over England and Scotland, it may be stated that all the platforms are ON THE SAME RELATIVE LEVEL. The distance between Eastern and Western coasts of England may be set down as 300 miles. If the prescribed curvature was indeed as represented, the central stations at Rugby or Warwick ought to be close upon three miles higher than a chord drawn from the two extremities. If such was the case there is not a driver or stoker within the Kingdom that would be found to take charge of the train. We can only laugh at those of your readers who seriously give us credit for such venturesome exploits, as running trains round spherical curves. Horizontal curves on levels are dangerous enough, vertical curves would be a thousand times worse, and with our rolling stock constructed as at present physically impossible.””

Both Dubay and his quoted engineer do not understand what elevation is or how it is measured

This proof shows the same lack of understanding as proof 10 by mistakenly treating elevation and the height of the hump caused by the curvature of the earth as the same thing.  This in itself proves the engineer to be ignorant of basic geometry and indicates his incompetence.


In addition, the quote refers to locomotive “stokers”… i.e. the person who used to shovel coal into the furnace of a steam locomotive.  This implies that this is yet another historic quote.  Modern engineers know better.  Once again the fact that no quote is available from an engineer who works on large projects from our modern age destroys the credibility of this claim.


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