MODERN TRAVEL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 October 1938, Page 3

MODERN TRAVEL

ELECTRICITY REPLACING STEAM. DEVELOPMENTS IN FRANCE. The time is approaching when steam railway trains will be a- memory of the past in France. The French National Railways are gradually extending the network of electrification of all their lines. Today, except for a short link of less than a 100 miles, it is possible to go from Paris to Hendaye, on the Spanish frontier, by electric train. The last link to be electrified is that between Angouleme and Bordeaux. The advantages of electricity over steam are numerous, the most important being speed and comfort. Speed will be greatly accelerated, because with an electric engine it is not necessary to change it after so many hundred miles. The absence of smoke means comfort to the traveller and much greater cleanliness everywhere. The electrification of all the southwest of France has proved a tremendous task. Between Tours and Bordeaux alone has necessitated the installation of a 90,000 volt power station with fourteen substations for transforming the current to 1500 volts. All this work has been carried out without the slightest interruption in the traffic. Tunnels have had to be enlarged, the electric fines installed and all the signalling system changed. For this short run of just of 200 miles, eleven hundred tons of aluminium, three thousand five hundred tons of brass for the contacts and twelve thousand tons of steel have been used.

Sixteen powerful locomotives will shortly be running regularly up and down this line. The saving involved will be very great, for the French railway engineers consider that the saving made by electricity over steam is at least three to one. They claim that one electric locomotive can easily do the work of two steam locomotives, and moreover they can pull much heavier trains, thus allowing for a heavy increase of traffic without additional operating expense. On the Paris-Bor-deaux line alone the saving in coal will amount to 130,000 tons per year.