Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1896-05-15
1t a5hlngton Standard
WESTINGHOUSE STREET CARS
sars Curious Plans Experiment.
ed with and abandoned.

seeking solution. Six different
methods are now in daily use, and
three others have been abandoned
within the past few years. Eight
wears ago all the street cars were
drawn by horses, and about half of
the cars were of the " bob-tail' va.
rietv.
Since that time there has been a
steady growth Of public sentiment
in the direction of improved meth
DDS, as Congress and the citizens
nave come to see more and more
clearly that the nations capital is
as a city set upon a hill which
should afford an example of all
that is best in every line of prog
ress. Accordingly the street rail
way companies have been encour-
aged to adopt improved systems of
transportation.
The first experiment was to
build an overhead trolley road.
This was run for several years I'M
til Congress decreed that the sys-
TEN must be abandoned. The
overhead wires, after a hard strug-
gle, came down, and now the road
is temporarily using horse power
again. There are several trolley
lines running to the city limits, but
the deadly overhead wire has dis
appeared forever from our fair
town.
Two roads have tried the stor.
age battery system, but both have
abandoned the experiment after
the expenditure of more than a
hundred thousand dollars. The
batteries were so heavy that
the pavement needed constant re-
pairing. If some one would invent
a storage battery that could be
made out of cotton instead of lead
he could make fortune.
The Metropolitan line is now
putting in a modified "Love" sys
tenn of underground electric sup
ply. The conductors are insulated
steel bars arranged in a conduit
similar to that used for the cable
road. The bearing surfaces are
about four inches broad, and in
place of a trolley wheel the car
carries springs which slide along
upon both plates and complete the
electric circuit through the motor
and rheostat.
In some respects the road is like
that in use for many years in Bud
ha Pesth, but the slot is midway
between the rails instead of close
to one of them.
The Rock Creek road has within
the city limits an underground sys-
tenn in which copper wires about
II in. in diameter are employed in.
steed of steel wires. These wires
are arranged on each side of the
slot and back of the slot rails. The
trolley has wheels which are
pressed upwardly against the lower
surfaces of the conductors. As
soon as the cars reach the city
limits the overhead trolley is used.
On North Capitol street still an
other electric system is being tried.
1t is called the Wheless," or
"magneto-electric" system. The
conductors are in a closed conduit
midway between the rails. About
thirty feet apart are iron contact
points which rise an inch or two
above the pavement of the street
Upon the bottom of the car is car
ried shoe having two runners
long enough to extend from one
set of contact points to the next
AS the car passes along sets Of
magnets are successfully energized
and as they rise up they lift the
conductor wires SO as to supply the
current to the motors upon the
cars through the iron contact
points. The conductors fall back
as soon as the car passes. The
conduit is a closed one; that is, has
no slot, and consequently no mois
ture can reach the wires.
The Washington and George
town Railroad uses four cables fol-
its various lines, one power plant
driving three of them. All the
cables are directly beneath the
slots.
The Columbia line uses a cable
but it is located at one side of the
slot instead of directly beneath it.
No account of Washington's
Street Railway system would be
complete without describing the
hudson Pneumatic" plan. The
theory was that the cars could be
propelled in either direction and
at any speed by varying the incli
nation of series of friction wheels