ELECTRIC TRAMWAY CARS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume III, Issue 631, 9 May 1882, Page 3

ELECTRIC TRAMWAY CARS.

[LONDON “TIMES.”] The first application of electricity to the driving of tramway cars in this country was made on March 4th, at the works of the North Metropolitan Tramways Company, Leytonstone. The car employed was one which has been the subject of a similar experiment in France, It was fitted with a large number of Faure accumulators ranged under the seats and communicating with a motor underneath, which, in its turn, by means of pinion-wheels, acted upon the wheels of the car. The* accumulators having been charged at a dy- ' namo machine in the company’s yard, a numberof ladies and gentlemen who had teen invited to witness the experiment mounted upon the car, and had a few runs with it up and down a quarter of a mile of tramway in Union road, to the amazement of the inhabitants, who, for the first time in their lives, saw a tramcar full of people travelling at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour without any visible motive power. As proving the applicability of electric force to locomotion, the experiment was an undoubted success. The accumulators, which weighed a ton and a halt, exerted, with one charging, a force equal to that of twenty-five horses for one hour that is to say, five horses for five hours, and so on. In other words, the car could have run with its full number of passengers for

Haifa day, with an ample allowance for waste of energy. The objection to this system, as at present carried out, rests on two grounds—first, that the car with Us load of accumulators weighs as much as five tons; and secondly, that the pinion-wheels make a loud grinding noise, such as seriously to incommode the public. Both these defects the promoters hope to be able to remedy by attaching the motor, which is practically a dynamo machine reversed, direct,to the axle, thus dispensing with the pinion-wheels and reducing friction. The attachment of the motor direct to the axle would necessitate in the case ot tramcars the use ot driving-wheels small enough to make a large number of revolutions per minute with a low rate of progression. In the case of railway trains it would enable a very high rate of speed to be attained—probably 100 miles an hour—with drivingwheels of moderate size. The promoters are sanguine enough to believe that at no distant day they may be able also, to introduce electric cabs and omnibusses, guided like velocipedes. ,■ All vehicles driven by electricity could, of course, with a little additional expenditure of force, be lighted by the same nteans. It only remains to add, with reference to the electric tramcar, that it can be worked, started, stopped, and reversed, by the moving of a small 7 switch-handle, and that the promoters L cafeidate' uppn-being able to work tramvv -wiyswith eiectricity at one half the cost ‘ ' V. i. f ;

of horse power. The experiment was carried out by Mr Radcliffc Ward on behalf of the Faure Accumulator Company-