Daily Kennebec journal., 1903-07-31
Maxine the World Smaller.

1
look with pity upon the stage-coach
days of our grandfathers, before the
fast express, the ocean greyhound, the
trolley car and the devil-wagon were
known. or the dreams OF Morse, Edl-
son Bell and Marconi had been real
ized. Perhaps our grandchildren will |
look with great pity upon the slowness |
and the cumbersome methods of this |
eeneration. 1.-The best is yet to be-"
and in ease, safety and rapidity of ira |
vel the limit has by no means been |
reached. There is even now in sight a |
railway which will carry passengers |
10 miles an hour regularly, and
strangely enough the credit for it be-
longs not to Yankee but to an Eng
lish engineer.
This weeks issue of Harper's weekly
has an illustrated article on the new
system which is now safely beyond the
experimental stage. The railway is to
be built at once between Manchester
and Liverpool, a distance of 34k miles.
Only through trains will be used, and
the running time will be less than
twenty minutes. The system is of the
so-called mono-rail type, that is, the
engine and cars rest upon one rail
which is about halfway from the floor
to the top of the car. By arranging
the seats back to back the construction
is such that each of the carriages strad-
dies the rail, and extends to trucks on
either side below the floor. On these
trucks are set wheels which lie hori-
zontally and run on the outside OF two
other rails. They thus act as steadi-
ers, and admit of very high velocity
with safety. and make abrupt curves
possible. The plan is to run an engine
and one car every ten minutes, and the
| probability is that in time for a radius
| Of 100 miles around large city people
| can get in and out each day to their
business within an hour. The plan has
| the support of expert engineers all over
| England. Many of them appeared be-
| fore the House of Commons committee
at the time when the sanction of the
government was secured for the build
ing of this little road, and they testi-
fled to the safety and practicability of
the whole scheme The mono-rail sys-
tenn is already in operation in Ireland
where there is a steam railroad about
Is miles long. The engine and passen-
ger cars are slung pannier-fashion
across a single rail which is raised
three feet from the ground. One guide
rail at the. base, is USED. - - =.
Engineers are agreed that average
| speeds of over seventy miles an hour
are impossible on the curves found on
existing railways. The construction OF
q special mono-rail track would enable
very high speeds to be reached with
perfect safety and would do away with
that mixture of speeds" which rem
ders the problem of dealing with ex-
| -
ever er-increasing difficulty to the rail-
way companies. The mono-rail tracks
would be laid alongside the existing
two-raiI ground tracks or the cars could
be run overhead If so desired. A view
Is given by Harper's weekly of a mono
rail electric car moving at the rate OF
one hundred miles an hour, on an eX-
pertinent track in England. 1t has
been practically established that the
limit of size and power in locomotives
and in rail-construction has beer
reached according to the present rail-
wav methods. Electricity has helped
materially in grades, not only making
a great saving in the construction o1
road beds, but in opening country o.
/. certain Typographical eccentricitN
which will never be available fol
steam power generated in locomo
tive hauling train. The combination
of electricity and the mono-rail sys
TEN makes these much sleeper grades
and sharper curves possible but at thu
same time it practically eliminates th'
danger of derailment 1t looks there
{ fore. as If there were a chance tha
passengers might be able to travel will
| Mt least the same safety as today. a
double the rate of the present tastes
, express train by the monO-rail system
| If this is so, another step has beer
| made in the great work of preventing
congestion in the life Of modern cities
Many men in this country travel al
hour by rail each way each day to ant
from their offices. Fifty miles is abou
the limit now. Extend this limit t.
, $50 miles, and the opportunity for liz
practically in the country with dali!
business work in the centre of a CIT!
becomes possible.
And this is not the only scheme nov
being exploited to make the wori'
smaller. Another is that of the com
nany which has just been chartered