ELECTRIC RAILROADS. Their Encouraging Progress in Europe and American.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 165, 14 August 1886, Page 5

ELECTRIC RAILROADS. Their Encouraging Progress in Europe and American.

Nobody, knows what t ele 4 6tricity is, nor why it goes through wire for a very long distance; Like' ftri&r, : it flows "from" point to point, compellecl by some tubieeh power, In the -case 'of, water, .the v power is called "gravity;" in electrical motion the impelling powqr is callek motive force.' By einploying different , 'methods of finding the' "wire in, th'e M armature . poll &ny n de- , sired electrormotive\for'ce,cau.be obtuined, lhi& , fact /resting on"' f ce.rtjair} laws of the, action of eleptripal currenk { Hundreds of .difiereij^ly arVanged" elec^o-motors haye. been experimented with, but.aa, yet s .thQy have r nbtf been of .practical J^alue v because they are not economical^ ]TJ£e, idea of using electricity generated % wer*to produce power, in 'turniwas/dißcove^ed accidentally at "the great International j Exhibition, m Vienna 7 B^3, . wUere'7%e gramme Com-; panybad't;wo machines on view, intended for r lighting 'purposes. One v of these mactiioeV 'was ( in "and" 1 a work-, man who- noticed. ]that 'some cablee were trailing on tb"e' ground^thjhiking they be logged ip the" iec<snd 'machine, placed them in t tern>roalB, ! ' ' To ttiesurpriee of'everybody this second, machine^ which 1 had standing, f'beg^nto ;tum of its own accord.' Then it ! was discovered that the, first machirie 'was working the qecond. The underlying principle in ih^e' tranemiesion now istneeouplingof two or'mpre dynamos. Th.e i m6etseno :^B, difficulty,. in' the way of transmittingfeurrerits of yast electro-motive force will : probably be 'that' 'of insulation. In Bavaria, in 18$2,'^"elfc(gip power was transmitted thirty-five miles over ordinary telegraph Wire, in France last year electric transmission of power w,a3 successfully tried ,over. seventy miles of wire. s "In' Boston the dynamos of the Massachusetts Electric Power Company, , using the Daft system, run by a steam engine, supply , electric power to ' about twenty motors in various parts of the "city.. Among the possibilities at no distant date are great qentraj stations, - where enormous steam ' engines will drive many electric machines. Wires could t be laid along every street;- and the electricity tapped into every house. The tides, the streams, and the wind might generate the needed power. Refuse coal at the ' mines could be so utilised.; and there ,is ' natural gae, , immense 'quantities of are wasted. It is possible' ijheit, the dynamo may replace the steam engine^ {i t \ 'the first electric, railway built in tb^ world was the handiwork of r Thomas Daven r port, a Vermont blacksmith' who began his experiments in 1834 with ah eleptro- magnet weighing four pounde, from which a weight of 150 pounds could be suspended. ' In 1835 at Springfield, ,Macs., hje built a small circular railway, on which he placed an electromagnetic engine. r ,The same year >he exhibited it in Boston for i'wp "w,eeks. , first electric railway on a useful scale was that of Siemens, exhibited at Berlin in 1879 It" was a narrow-gaugei half a^mile", longi carried about twenty -five . persons each trip, a,nd its maximum speed wajs -twenty miles an hgiir An electric railross, , a mile and. a'^alf long, has been' running in a suburb of Berlin' since JLBBI, and has never faiied. to carry, its daily, traffic. In the neighbourhood ,of tbe , giant's Causeway, on the- ,of Ireland,, an electric railway six miles Jong has'be.en in successful daily operation since ISovenaber , 5, 1883. The electricity, is supplied, by a waterfall on the river B^sh,, The, steepest grade is 200 feet to the mile. The, road, is paying 12 1 per cent dividends, .and, ,it is ,, proposed to extend to six milesl, The "electric railway ,on the beaeK at Brightbn.iJngland, , has handled a bjsavy, tjraffip for thepas^yqar without hiioh or delay,., the carg runningincessantly twelve hours aday^ The eleo« trie rajlway last opened in .Great Britafn runs between Newry and Besßbrook, a dis- j tance of , three , miles. The dynamos here | also are worked by waterfall. The electric railway at Blackpool, England, two miles long, was opened last September, . There are short electric lines on the continent, including one two miles long in the suburb's of Vienna. The application of power from stored electricity ht%e not yet been perfected, nut it is likely to play a most important'part in the electric world. Since March, 1872, an electric railway, using Faure accumulators, has been in operation at Breuil-en-Auge, France, with great practical success. Public , experiments with the accumulators in the streets of London, Paris, and Berlin have been* very encouraging.,- „ ,• ? , In America the first electric, railway was opened to the public at 'Saratoga in, 1883. One operated on the Craft system, began. its trips at Coney Island in Jihepummer/ot 1884 ; and about;the came time an electric railroad was;put iA'^use tfttftfee East Cleveland horse,x*iiro^d. The most practical electric railway in this 'Countries that punning in one of the suburbs of Baltimore. It' has , a maximum grade of 275", feet to the mile. Some of the, roads in itaw York are getting ready to use the electro-motor. Its application,,to them, Edison says, is now only a question of the draughtsman's .work. . The author has no doubt of the eventual success of electric railways.