Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1899-09-15
ELECTRIC MOTORS vs.. LOCOMOTIVES
High Speeds Not Considered Probable
as Il Result of Electricity.

From the Engineering News.
Wen fairly fly in the by and by is
the heading which we find attached to some
recent public deliverances on electricity as
the motor for the high-speed trains of the
future. 1t Is little curious how universal
ly it appears to be assumed that If 1t were
desired to run trains at speeds of, say 100
miles per hour. electricity would be the
power adopted. In the present state of
the art it must be said that nothing has
ever yet been accomplished in the way
of high speed on electric railway, even
experimentally, beyond what the steam To-
connective is doing in actual service. week
in and week out. The fast schedules on
the New York Central and on the Phla
delpha and Readings Atlantic City line
have proved that locomotives can be regu-
larly run at speeds up to seventy miles
per hour and upward, and that with safe
ty and regularity. If it is desired to in
crease these speeds to 100 miles per hour.
locomotive designers could be found, we
are sure. who would undertake TO pro-
vide Il machine to accomplish the work,
assuming of course, that the train load
would also be lightened. 1t is frequently
said that the fact that the locomotive is
a reciprocating machine, while the eler
trio motor is a rotary one, gives the latter
an advantage in the matter Of high speeds.
AS an abstract proposition, this is doubt
less true, but the locomotive has by no
means reached its limit in the matter of
speeds. Larger driving wheels, lighter re-
ciprocatinS parts and smore careful bal
ancing some of the means by which
higher speeds could be made feasible
as are the speeds at present reached. 1t
is worth noting that none of our present
day locomotives use drivers as large as
those in use many years ago on some ia
nous English locomotives Of high speed.
Another argument occasionally heard is
that the high-speed electric motor would
be much less severe on the track than the
locunptiyp Int this again iS
based on theory rather than practice. AS
a matter of fact the standard electric
railway track now uses rail nearly twice
the depth of the standard steam railway
rail- and this practice has been forced
upon the electric railways by the impos-
sibility of keeping up their joints with any
lighter construction.
Evidently the electric motor designers
have also some problems to solve before
they will be ready to put in bids for a
100 mile per hour service. The matter of.
current collection, for example. might prove
a hard nut to crack. The trolley is, of
ing of caSt-iron shoe sliding on a third
rail at a speed of 100 feet per second might
cause some difficulties.
We must candidly acknowledge that the
subject is not a vital at present. for
no railway, to run trains at 100 miles an
hour, is yet in sight, except in the brains
of impecunious promoters Existing rail-
way lines would find ii very difficult for
operating reasons to run trains of such
high speed on their existing lines, and the
proposal to build special high-speed cleo
routes as that between New York and
Philadelphia, has never yet been present
ed to financiers in way to command
their support. 1t would probably be a
much easier task to build either electric
or steam locomotives to make 100 miles
an hour over such line than 1t would be
to find sufficient traffic to make it a pay
ing enterprise.