GYROSCOPE RAILWAY.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 76, 1 April 1910, Page 3

GYROSCOPE RAILWAY.

ITS POSSIBILITIES. Since Mr. Louis Brennan gave a public demonstration with hi? gyioscope railway a few months ago, he has received many Australian visitors at is works in Kent, including the Agents(jeneral ajid the Inspector-General of Victorian public works (writes the London correspondent of tho Melbourne Age). The invention seems to have an irresistible attraction for Australians, most of whom are favourably impressed by its practical possibilities. Having disposed of the German rights of his patent and made arrangements for the mono-rail line which is to be constructed in north-west India, Mr. Brennan is now occupying himself chiefly in improving the design of his first fullbized car. lie is also devising an apparatus with which switching at stations on the mono-rail lines can be done by the driver or guard of each car, this being calculated both to diminish traffic risks and to save labour. In connection with the idea that the mono-rail might be u&ed as a means of communication between isolated inland districts of Australia and the furthest extension of existing railways, it has been pointed out that considerable loss of time and expense would be incurred in transferring heavy goods from one system to the other at the junctions. In the course of a recent conversation with Mr. Brennan, the Agent-Gen-eral for Queensland (Mr. Robinson) asked him whether it would not be practicable* to avoid the aecess-ity of cargo transfers by running the gyroscope cars over the ordinary railways, using the rail furthest from the station platform?. Mr. urennan replied that a gyroscope car, after leaving its own single rail in an up country district, could be run without difficulty any distance on one of the rails of an ordinary track ; but m order to avoid excessive wear of one rail some arrangement would have to be made for the alternate use of both. As the gyroscope cars are much wider than the carriages or trucks of ai) ordinary train, it would not be practicable, when passing a station, to run them on the rail nearest to the platform. It would either be necessary to dispense with platforms, as is done in America nnd some huropean countries, or to construct separate stations for the gyroscope trains, .at which these trains could be switched from one line to the other, as the time-table df tho ordinary steam traffic permitted. Mr. Robinson thinks that there is a great future for the mono-rail in the thinlj settled districts of Western Queensland. He believes that both for commeicial nnd military purposes a connection should ultimately be established witb Mi. Brennan's system between the existing railways in that district and Port Darwin.