LIGHTING OF RAILWAY CARRIAGES IN GERMANY.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2113, 1 December 1880, Page 3

LIGHTING OF RAILWAY CARRIAGES IN GERMANY.

From reports recently obtained from the various German railway authorities it appears that the present state of the lighting of carriages is as follows :—For lighting material, rapeseed oil, gas, and to a considerable extent even candles, are used. Of some 16,168 carriages adapted for illumination 10,968 (or 67.8 per cent.) are lit with rapeseed oil, 2653 (or 16.4 per cent.) with gas, and 2247 (or 15.8 per cent.) with candles. In addition, experiments have been made on some lines with the so-called Mohring oil, which is a mixture of petroleum and rapeseed oil. The gas used is partly made in works belonging to the railway, from fat, paraffin, petroleum, gas oil, or coal tar oil partly obtained from gas manufactories. The gas holders, in which gas can be compressed to five and a half or six atmospheres, are fixed under the carriages, and connected with the burners by means of tubes with regulators of pressure and valves. The filling of the holders is accomplished either direct from the gas works by means of caoutchouc tubes, or through transportable gas reservoirs, which can be filled with five to six cubic metres gas pressed to ten atmospheres, or from small vessels. A single filling of a gas holder suffices for thirty or forty, or even sixty hours’ burning. The average coat given by the authorities, per flame and hour of burning, varies in the case of gas between 2 pfennigs and 3.37 pf.; in the case of oil, between 0.667 pf. and 7.5 pf. 5 omd in the case of candles, between I.Bpf, and 6pf.