Streets and Highways in Foreign Countries: Reports from the Consuls of the United States on Streets and Highways in Their Several Districts in Answer to a Circular from the Department of State, Volume 3

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U.S. Government Printing Office, 1891 - Roads - 592 pages
 

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Page 433 - All the irregularities of the upper part of the said pavement are to be broken off by the hammer, and all the interstices to be filled with stone chips firmly wedged or packed by hand with a light hammer ; so that when the whole pavement is finished, there shall be a convexity of four inches in the breadth of fifteen feet from the centre.
Page 51 - Frenchmen who have made a practical study of economic problems, that the superb roads of France have been one of the most steady and potent contributions to the material development and marvelous financial elasticity of the country.
Page 411 - The steepest gradient that can be allowed on roads with a broken-stone covering is about 1 in 20, as this, from experience, is found to be about the angle of repose upon roads of this character in the state in which they are usually kept. Upon a road with this inclination, a horse can draw, at a walk, his usual load for a level without requiring the assistance of an extra horse ; and experience has...
Page 415 - This shape not only assists the water to pass from the centre towards the sides, but contributes to the drying of the road by allowing the action of the sun and air to produce a great degree of evaporation. Surveyors ought to use a level...
Page 369 - Bristol, and he put in practice the leading principle of his system of road-making, namely, "to put broken stone upon a road, which shall unite by its own angles so as to form a solid, hard surface." "It follows," he adds, "that when that material is laid upon the road, it must remain in the situation in which it is placed without ever being moved again ; and what I find fault with in putting quantities of gravel on the road is that, before it becomes useful, it must move its situation, and be...
Page 413 - No; when a road is made flat, people will not follow the middle of it as they do when it is made extremely convex. Gentlemen will have observed that in roads very convex...
Page 250 - ... bowlders he substituted stone broken small. His leading principle was that a road ought to be considered as an artificial flooring, so strong and even as to let the heaviest vehicle pass over it without impediment. Then people began to hear with wonder of roads 30 and 40 'feet wide rising only 3 inches in the center, and he propounded the extraordinary heresy that a better and more lasting road could be made over the naked surface of a morass than over solid rock. Another of his easy first principles...
Page 345 - The paving shall consist of 4 by 4 inch granite or syenite cubes from North Wales or other approved quarries, laid in regular, straight, and properly bonded courses, with close joints, and to be evenly bedded on a layer of fine gravel half an inch iu thickness.
Page 260 - Bridgwater, to be as five to seven in favour of the wearing on the morass, where the road is laid on the naked surface of the soil, against a part of the same road made over rocky ground.
Page 256 - ... excellent road, if due attention be paid to the size ; but from want of that attention, many of the flint roads are rough, loose, and expensive. Limestone, when properly prepared and applied, makes a smooth, solid road, and becomes consolidated sooner than any other material; but from its nature is not the most lasting. Whinstone is the most durable of all materials; and wherever it is well and judiciously applied, the roads are comparatively good and cheap. The pebbles of Shropshire and Staffordshire,...

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