The daily morning journal and courier., 1897-02-17
ENGINES FOR SCRAP IRON
Continued from First Page.)

At the close of that summers work, two years ago, it was determined to make further experiments as to the power which can be obtained from these motors and from this power house. As we were engaged in some heavy construction work, which requir- ed the use of between fifty and one hundred ears of granite every day, a sufficient number of these were weigh ed and sent to the power house for the purpose of testing by no spring or no patent contrivance, but by the actual article, the power which was general ed and used with the apparatus We found that we could haul in both di- rections, lest there might be any slight
 grade in either more than the other, over one thousand tons of dead weight. And it was determined, first, that cleo tricity with given volume of business
 was cheaper way of applying power
 generated in a single station than by
 generating it at the head of train in
 locomotive, and, second, that it was
 no longer a plaything, but would an-
 swer for serious work. That was the
 lesson of the first summer.
 In the fall I directed that the engin-
 eers should make an estimate of the
 cost of extending this trolley, which
 was entirely satisfactory in every way,
 toward Boston. The conditions were
 different We had to deal with a road
 already double tracked, and the ques- tion of supporting the trolley wires over
 the center of the tracks was very diff
 ferent one from the erection Of posts
 alongside of a single track, and the
 laying of the second track far enough
 away from the posts to prevent accl-
 dents. It was necessary to put either
 8 truss across the two tracks, with a
 margin of safety from the possible
 heads of passengers, or in some way to
 support these trolley wires. There
 were many bridges which carried the
 railroad and many bridges that carried
 the highways over the railroad. There
 was not room between the tracks for this center line of posts, and to spread the tracks for the purpose of using them 1t involved the reconstruction of the road. The tracks carrying the
 bridge must be changed and the
 bridges spread. The tracks carrying the highways over the railroad must
 have their abutments removed and set farther away from the track. The eX-
 pense of suspending these trolley wires
 by truss or by spanning wires was
 very much complicated by the grading of a steam road, already constructed,
 when passing from cut to fill. The ex- pense of either construction forbade any further experiment in that dtrec- ton.
 We then took up the question of ,Ir y,,i1 tween the running rails, for the pur- pose of conveying the current and dis pensing with the trolley wire entirely We'll, of course, the trouble began. The electricians all told us that the current
 would be lost, and that we might put
 as much current as we pleased at one
 end and at the first five miles it would be dissipated. I asked them if they could suggest any remedy for that, and they handed me an involved set of tig-
 ures, such as l have never seen since left school which told me how many copper feeler wires must be laid and so on. I asked whether the current passed along the outside, or through the body of a conductor, and of every eleven
 men, entirely conversant with their business, five said through the inside, five said on the outside, and the elev-
 enth man said he did not know, I took the judgment of the eleventh man, and
 not knowing myself, determined that we would make this rail in such a sec tion that if this mysterious current 1 for it is mysterious to anybody, street | railroad or standard railroad men should take a notion to travel through the body of the rail it should have body | large enough to conduct it. And the rail laid was of one hundred pounds
 weight, having the advantage in mak- 1 ing that weight of providing also a
 very large surface. The electric rail is
 substantially like a letter "A" the top
 resembling ordinary surface rails with
 sloping sides, which gives it an ap-
 pearance entirely distinguishable from
 the outside ones. The question came up
 of insulating the rail to avoid loss of current. The current costs money. We
 went to work on that and one of the l largest electrical companies cast some sections identical to what we proposed | to lay down and made some tests, pro-
 posing a number of elaborate schemes for insulating this rail. We agreed l
 enth man. I said to them that no doubt
 that their scheme would be nicer, but | we would try to do 1t with simple | blocks of wood We felt our way in
 that direction and finally laid down five
 miles of double track with these A
 shaped rails bonded therein, and bond l ed the outside rails in the usual man
 ner, and I give you my word that ever | this country have been trying to invent l some excuse for the current keeping on those rails and doing it's work and not diffusing itself and wasting Their
 tests showing practically no loss of the force amazed them, and they confessed i that they could not understand it. But 1 they said trouble would come when we
 got ice, snow and rain. The kind Prov | idence sent us cloudburst at that
 place and all three rails were under water for hours and the cars went on 1 just the same. They said these are the i facts and we cannot tell why exactly,
 but that probably this thing could not 1 be done to any greater distance. A 1 couple of street railroads running up 1 into the interior of the country wanted | to get their passengers down to the beach line, and we told them they
 might lay their tracks on the back side of our station platform. When we put 1 the third rail in operation and began