FAST TRAVEL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 November 1940, Page 3

FAST TRAVEL

DEVELOPMENTS ON LAND & IN THE AIR. JOHN COBB'S PROPHECY. The prophecy of John Cobb, holder of the present world’s record for land speed, that in a few years mankind will be able to travel 400 miles an hour by automobile, seems incredible to those whose fastest rides consist of “going like 60,” a writer in the Christian Science Monitor” observes.

It brings up the question of just how fast mankind can expect to travel on land, sea, and in the air. Each day brings some new improvement that cuts deeper and deeper into the area labelled "impossible" a few years ago. Demands for military planes are giving impetus to speed progress in the air. Reputedly the fastest plane in the clouds is the Curtiss P-40, an Army pursuit plane supposed to be capable of 400 to 450 miles an hour. The fastest car is the Railton Red Lion clocked at 368.85 miles an hour; the fastest ship "Bluebird II” at 141.74 miles an hour; and the fastest heavyduty locomotive is the Pennsylvania's new "SI" the largest, most powerful steam locomotive known. It can pull a 14-car passenger train at 100 miles an hour.

Latest of the developments making such speeds possible is the greatly expanded use of tapered roller bearings, a mechanical refinement of which most passengers are hardly aware. In railroading, especially, it means progress, for now freight can move as fast as passenger traffic, something greatly to be desired in the days to come when slow freight handling might form a giant bottleneck to hamper the na-. tional emergency programme.