Abstract: A vehicle for cleaning a railway roadbed of magnetic articles such as spikes, tie plates, rail support plates, bolts, and the like has a chassis supported by rail engaging wheels which are rotated by a hydraulic motor powered by an internal combustion engine driven pump mounted on the chassis. At least one endless conveyor of non-magnetic flexible material is mounted on the chassis with a lower end thereof adjacent the roadbed and passing over a lower drum supporting fixed magnets. The conveyor is driven by a hydraulic motor powered by the pump to move at the same speed as the vehicle to prevent scuffing over the ballast of the roadbed. The endless conveyor is provided with spaced parallel cleats across the conveyer whereby metallic articles attracted by the magnets acting through the conveyor will engage the articles and move them along the conveyor out of the field of action of the magnets.

Abstract: A heat-insulating enclosure contains temperature-regulating means and open-topped vessels each containing a sample of predetermined volume and transferred from a storage position to an analysis position in which a predetermined volume of reagent solution is contacted with the sample. Means are provided for detecting the respective temperatures of the sample and the reagent, for detecting the heat flux released and limiting thermal variations in the vicinity of each sample.

Abstract: The pump comprises a measuring enclosure, a plunger mounted within the enclosure, a second enclosure which is contiguous with the first, a pneumatic jack rigidly fixed to the plunger for sliding motion within the second enclosure and defining therein a first and a second chamber, a stop rod which establishes the range of travel of the jack and a linear distributor which communicates at each end with a source of driving fluid. The distributor has three grooves such that in one end position, the measuring chamber is connected to a storage tank and one face of the jack is put into communication with one of the two sources of driving fluid and in the other end position, the measuring enclosure is connected to a collecting tank and the other face of the jack is put into communication with the other source of driving fluid.

Abstract: A direct current power supply for manual arc welding comprising a polyphase transformer, a polyphase rectifier system including triggered rectifier valves, and a control system therefor which comprises means for setting the output current level by adjustment of a reference signal, means providing negative feed-back of the output voltage and the output current, and means for adjusting the slope of the characteristic by adjustment of the proportion between the amounts of feed-back of the voltage and the current. The current level setting means and the slope adjustment means are linked with each other to provide automatically a desired correlation between the slope and the current setting.