The Sunday herald and weekly national intelligencer., 1890-04-20
WITH AN UNDERGROUND WIRE
Highly Successful Test of a New Electric
Railway System.

Highly Successful Test of New Electric
Railway System.
A very successful test was made yesterday
afternoon at lexington of Mr.. Wheless's new
system of electric street railroad. The nyen-
tor, q young man of about thirty years, whose
clean-cut features and keen bright eye strike
one Immediately as indicative of high order Of
intelligence, is resident of this city. He
comes from the South, having spent his boy
hood at New Orleans, and has had to ght his
own way through life from his earliest years.
His talent for mechanics. and especially for
electricity, has been his moving impulse for
years. Besides his electric road, he has almost
perfected recording telephone, and made
other inventions and improvements in electrics.
A little distance from the power-house at
lexington there is a large open field of
sloping, irregular surface. The bright sun
shone pleasantly on the green sward, but
that was not what the crowd of business
men came to see: What they did see was
the old Seventh street car No. So fitted with
motor and surface trolley and running back
and forth on a roughly-constructed track,
climbing grades of 10 or 12 per cent with ease
while loaded to overcrowding with solid men.
The novel feature of Mr.. Wheless's road is the
method of conducting his power current. The
rails are like those of an ordinary street-car
track. Between them runs the power wire in
shallow, insulated conduit. The trolley wheel
runs over this wire and takes the current up
into the motor. The conduit slot is only about
half an inch wide, so that horses, dogs, or
human beings could not get shock if they tried.
At intervals of ninety or one hundred feet the
power wire is broken and connected with traps,
into which buried wire leads that carries the
current from the power house. The novelty of
the system consists in having only that section
of power wire vitaliZed or charged on which the
car finds itself This is done by small storage
battery on the car, closing the connection be-
tween the conducting wire and the power wire
in the conduit, the circuit being made and
broken in the traps by system of electro-mag-
nets BY this means no part of the power wire
is charged except the one section of ninety feet
with which the trolley is in contact. This pre-
vents the leaking, of current and high re-
sistance that so bothers other systems.
The numerous curves and exceedingly steep
! grades proved no impediment to motion, even
when such heavy men as the following were on
the car: Ex-Governor Saunders, eX-Commis-
sioner Wheatley, Henry Hurt, Edward Herman,
K. V. Greer, M. j. Adler, Henry NJ. Baker,
Rev. Dr. Bartlett, j. B. Henderson, Spencer
Watkins, Alex. Kilgore, Samuel Ross, Glen
| Howard, G. 7. Howard, and Mr.. Appleman
These gentlemen examined the car, traps,
conduit, ETC., thoroughly, and rode up and
! down the hill, and all seemed to think it a sue
| cess
The inventor claims that the initial cost of
construction, as well as the cost of main
! tenance afterward will fall much below that
! of any other road. He says it will not go over
small compared to the cost of a cable road
which amounts to over one hundred thousand
dollars. A pleasant feature of the system is its
| absolute nofselessness.