SILENT RAILWAY TRAIN

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 4, 29 July 1946, Page 8

SILENT RAILWAY TRAIN

' “Tut-a-tuk . . . tut-a-tuk”—the maddening beat of a railway train—may soon be a thing of the past, owing to the work of a British inventor, Mr George Ellson, C.B.E. The beat is caused by the wheels passing in turn over the three-eighth-inch gap necessarily left between the 60ft. length of rail to allow for expansion. The fish-plates joining the rails are the weakest points in the line; they give slightly with the weight pf the train, making a hollow. Hence the bump. The Ellson joint solves the problem at long last. A flange in the fishlate fits snugly into a 1-inch recess cut at the end of each rail, thus making the join between two a continuous surface in place of a gap. The result is magical. Passing over a stretch of permanent way linked by Ellson joints, the train seems, in the words of a Government railway inspector uttered recently, “to go to sleep.”—Latin-American World.