The Monorail

New Zealand Tablet, Issue 17, 25 April 1907, Page 22

The Monorail

There is a proposal to connect two centres on , the west coast of our North Island with a- .monorail or. Lartigue railway. For a cheap and swift transit the monorail (what a hybrid name it has- got) has admitJedly vast potentialities. Several Of these racing lines are in operation in a sober and dignifited way in France, and one in Ireland (in the Kingdom of Kerry). But they are in no particular hurry, and have not as yet taken to eating up distance in accordance with - their alleged capacity for so doing. "We have yet to see what the 'double-engines and the pannier-carriages of the Lartigue system would -do if they got astride_the single elevated rail in New Zealand. Some years ago a j.»roposal was hotly pushed to ruif mono-trains between Liverpool and Manchester at the rate of 140 miles an hour. A steam motor-car on the smooth Daytona Beach, Florida, xecently screeched through the air at a timed rate of over 127 miles an Jvffl&r. The monorail claims to be able to. go "easily ' dne better.' -But the Manchester proposal almost, scared the eye-lids T off the, quiet, old-fashioned folk who -thought that the Ultima Thule of Tailway spefd should be expressed in Ranktne's lines :—: — 1 Dash along, crash along, sixty miles an hour ! Right through olti England flee ! For I am bound to see my love, Far away—in the North Countrie.' In the early 'days of the locomotive, a critic in the ' Quarterly Review ' went into a state of consternation at the idea of people being ' whirled through space at the rate of 18 to 20 miles an hour, by means -of a high-pressure engine.' We live to learn— and endure. If we are to believe the advocates of the monorail, it promises as great a revolution in speed over the best present-day compound passenger engine,- as did the • Rocket '- arcd the ' Puffing Billy ' of the early nineteenth century over horse-traction.