STEAM AND ELECTRICAL RAILROADS.

Progress, Volume II, Issue 6, 1 April 1907, Page 211

STEAM AND ELECTRICAL RAILROADS.

Judging from the events of the year the time is still far removed when the steam locomotive will have been crowded off the great system of railroads which it has brought into existence, and on which it has been so long supreme. For long distance service it still remains the most economical Just now the most noticeable steam railroad lines under construction are those of the Tehuantepec railroad, which must necessarily prove a formidable competitor to the Panama Canal, and the so-called Cape-to-Cairo railroad. The former line is about completed, and the latter has made such good progress that it has now been carried over two thousand miles north of Cape Town, and some fifteen hundred miles south of Cairo. Early in the year the road should reach Lake Tanganyika, after which it will be necessary to construct only about four hundred miles of road in order to afford a complete rail, river, and lake route from Cape Town to the Mediterranean Sea. In this connection mention should be made of the recent attempt to interest the investing public in the proposed Zambesi-Johannesberg electrical power transmission line — a scheme which, in spite of the prominent names which have been recently associated with it in press despatches, seems to border on the Wild Cat If it does not pay to transmit from Niagara Falls to New York, the question may pertinently be asked : how can the thing be profitably done over twice the distance through a barren and savage country ?