May Revolutionise Transport

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 370, 2 June 1928, Page 16

May Revolutionise Transport

PRIEST’S ELECTRIC-STORAGE DISCOVERY

600 Miles Without Recharging

NO stuttering ear exhausts, n bustion engines, no poison no snorting steam trains, no r silent carriages, waggons and 1 ugly overhead gear or cables t no noise. Such, according to the Melbourne “Herald,” is the vision of the Victorian Minister for Railways, Mr. Tunneeliffe, who thinks so seriously of a new method of storing electricity, by which it would be possible for the Sydney express to run to Melbourne on one charging of the batteries, that he has forwarded details of the invention to the Railways Commissioners for investigation and report. The inventor is a Spanish Jesuit priest named Alfreds, who is putting his system on American and Continental markets. The Railways Commissioners have stated that they had full details and

10 bang-banging internal comfumes of petrol in the streets, aoise . . hut a city of fast, trains, easy to control, without hat break and —comparatively literature about the system, which would have to be tested by independent experts. “If there is no flaw in this invention,” said Mr. Tunneeliffe, “it will absolutely revolutionise railways throughout the world. One big American railroad company, which was about to start big extensions of its present system, had stayed its hand, while its experts investigate the new method, which, if the claims made are upheld, it intends to adopt.” The biggest problem the electrical ; engineer had been faced with, Mr. Tunneeliffe went on, had always been i storage. At present sufficient electrij city could he stored to propel, theor-

etically, for 100 miles, but in practice this was reduced to 50 miles

The City Council used storage batteries for vehicles, but stored electricity up to date had been impracticable for any distance. “By this new storage method,” Mr. Tunneeliffe went on, “batteries, lighter and more compact than those that now last only 50 miles, would last for 600 miles without recharging.

“Just imagine the transport of the future! No steam trains, no overhead live wires, no petroldriven cars or motor-cycles, and hardly any noise.”

Air. Tunneeliffe indicated that if his opinion was backed up by the department’s engineers, who only could give an opinion based on sound technical knowledge, all the world’s railway systems would scrap their steam trains and use the more compact, smaller, and less expensive electric storage locomotives. It would be cheaper and cleaner. Conversion would be simple. The storage-driven locomotive could be put at once on the SydneyMelbourne line without any alteration to the line itself.

The terrific expense of electrifying 600 miles of line with overhead or other gear would be unnecessary. Fast electric expresses would sweep from capital to capital without vibration, smoke, or grime. Simplicity of control and consequent greater relia’balny both of motor-cars and locomotives would be a direct result. Carburettion troubles would vanish. Instead

of a petrol tank would be a spare battery. Charging and battery exchange stations would line main roads, and petrol service stations would be as numerous as livery stables to-day. Mr. Tunneeliffe considers this invention, if the claims of its inventor are substantiated, to mark the beginning of a new epoch in the history of world transportation.