TRAIN TO FLY

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 July 1923, Page 6

TRAIN TO FLY

SHEDS ITS WHEELS Plans for a great aerial train, which may revolutionise commercial flying, are under examination by experts of great “airways,” says lhe “Daily Chronicle’s” aeronautical correspondent. A great, slim, graceful, metal-built saloon, like a long, tapering railway Pullman car is the main basis of the idea. Cleverly “streamlined” to lessen wind resistance, and covered externally with smooth, gleaming sheets of a feather-weight metal alloy, this great “air-rail” coach will be designed to rest on a long, specially designed framework, which wili have sets of bogey wheels like a railway Pullman. Thus equipped the “coach”—which will have day and night accommodation — will be backed by an engine into a railway station. Then, when the travellers have embarked in the saloon, it will run over the railway, drawn by an engine, like a boat express, till it has reached an aerodrome outside the city. The big “car,” its passengers still ensconced in its noiseless, draughtproof interior, will be backed till ic is resting in the centre of a strange, intricate framework of widespread wings, upon which engines and airscrews will be mounted. The coach will shed its rail-wheels and slide into position above a powerful, pneumatic-tired aeroplane chassis to wheih it will be bolted swiftly; while quickly-made connections will attach it to the big lifting wings. Thus, in a minute or so, the train will become a great Pullman of the air. Gliding to earth at its destination, lhe “Hying train” will perform a second “quick-change,” discarding its wings, and sliding on to another waiting bogie truck.