Volume Ten - Pre-Victorian to the present day - even more aspects - The Patent for the Penarth Slipway - 1881 . . .

Mr. James Leslie cont'd :

Fig. 5 would explain the action without farther description, but there required to be a shift or fleeting of rods every 20 feet, instead of every 40 feet when two rods were taken out at once.

The Granton slip had worked satisfactorily ever since, and up to 1857 the endless pitch-chain had been adopted at Hobart Town, Trieste, and Newcastle ; but since then a hydraulic purchase had been sometimes used instead of the pitch-chain machinery ; and he understood from Messrs. Morton that in some cases, instead of a pitch-chain, they used two chain cables working over two pitch wheels ; meaning thereby, he presumed, wheels with indents for the sideway links sunk in their periphery.

Mr. James Taylor.

Mr. James Taylor, of Birkenhead, thought it was possible, without winding-barrels being stationary, to arrange a system of grooved pulley-heads, geared to work together in unison with steel wire-ropes passing and crossing round double heads without chafing, the ends being anchored at the top and bottom of the incline.

The system should be actuated by means of a pair of engines having link reversing-motion, with boiler upon a travelling platform attached to the upper end of the cradle, to travel up or down the incline at will, thus producing a continuous haul from the start to the end of the journeys of the cradle.