The Salt Lake herald-Republican. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1909-1918, 1909-12-03
RAILROAD MEN IN
WEST INTERESTED
Two Recent Developments
May Alter the Entire Bust
ness of RaiIroading.
TELEPHONES MAY BE USED
MoNoRAlL, TESTED IN ENGLAND,
ATTRACTS MUCH ATTENTION.

Western railroad men, including many
in Salt Lake, where nearly every official
at one time or another has been con-
cerned in problems of construction, are
immensely interested in two recent devel-
Opments which they believe may alter the
entire business Of rafIrOading.
The first is the possibility Of trains be-
ing dispatched by telephone. Since the
Western Union has been absorbed by the
telephone combine, it has been announced
that onsEOf the purposes Of the consolida-
ton was to use the wires for both tele-
phoning and telegraphing at the same
time. This has been done for years. but
the telegraphing was only incidental.
Nearly all of the big telephone companies
have telegrapher who sends orders to
employees and other things of which IL
is advisable to keep a written record.
With the big copper wires in use on
modern telephone lines, promoters of the
combine say they will be able to tele-
graph clear across the continent without
relaying, in favorable weather, and they
believe the gam in efficiency will prevent
any congestion of kilograms exceDt when
very bad storms take place.
The Santa t'e railroad is already using
the telephone IN train dlSpatching. Off
Gals on that line say the principal ad-
vantage is that train, no matter how
far from a station, can get into com
municatiOn with the train dispatcher in
five minutes time. The Santa Fe Off
Gals are also experimenting with devices
which will enable them to stop trains at
all telephone booths on lines where the
block system does not serve much the
same purpose. The chief draw back Of
telephone dispatching-an most tele-
graphers believe II TO be a fatal one
is the inability TO make record Of train
orders except at the sending offices.
A Bad Drawback.
Another drawback is that the human
voice over the telephone is apt to be mis-
understood, and that when one word is
misunderstood by the man receiving it
the same misunderstanding Will take
place when he repeats it to the sender.
The original sender is more than apt to
misunderstood it. In teiegraphy this dam
ger is Obviated, because Morse Signals are
seldom misunderstood and it is almost
lncOnceiVable that the error would not
be discovered by the repetition which is
the iron clad rule for all train orders.
Railroad men are anXiOusly awaiting
the beginning of transmission of tele-
grams over telephone lines, because when
it begins it will certainly compel the rail-
roads to pay the wages of all their opera
tors without receiving aid from the tele-
graph company commercial messages.
Another modern development which may
or may not affect railrOading in the next
decade is the mOnOrail, which was tested
successfully in England recently with a
car carrying forty persons. The Penn
syiVania railroad representatives who saw
the test We're so much impressed that they
Immediately obtained the right to use it
if their company desired to do so.
If the monOrail in actual practice is
what it is in theory railroad men say
it viii be the biggest boon the west has
ever known, except, perhaps, the reclama-
ton of arid lands.
Practical railroad engineers figure that
the mOnOrail line can be built for one
tenth of the cost of the ordinary rail-
road and it can go where no ordinary
railroad can. The operation expenses
would be only a 1.-THE Of the cost of run
ring a railroad. although the first cost
of the cars themselves. would be great.
The crux Of the monOrail system Is the
gyrOscOpe. There are two horoscopes in
each car, weighing several tens and re-