"DIESEL FLYERS" CRITICISED

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22347, 10 March 1938, Page 12

"DIESEL FLYERS" CRITICISED

* COAL TRACTION CHEAPER IN BRITAIN ISSLOtt Otlß OWN COHHE3I'ONDENT.) LONDON, February 16. The day of'the tram is over. That, at least,is the opinion of Mr E.Leslie Burgin, British Minister for Transport. "The tram has performed a most useful service as the working man's method of getting to and from his work," he said this week. "But I think that apart from those cities which are so tram-minded that to take trams from them would be an insult —I refer to Edinburgh and Glasgow—in the great majority of other cases it would be better if the trams were progressively removed. "Just as I desire that the tram should be removed and its place taken by a bus, so I think that the bus should be a trolley-bus, using an equivalent output o!f electricity generated by an equivalent expenditure on coal." Mr Burgin said that he had a report showing that the most economical fuel for main-line traction continued to be coal, and declared that Britain's great main-line trains carried twice as many people as the "Diesel flyers" abroad, and cost half as much. He suggested that scientists should tackle the problem of the engine which .could be driven on the oil produced from coal. The coal industry, he added, ought to believe that, harnessed to science and counled to rpsolute policy, it should stand' at a higher level of value and importance than it had hitherto attained.