THE ELECTRIC RAILWAY IN THE BLEACHFIELD.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume III, Issue 284, 7 August 1882, Page 4

THE ELECTRIC RAILWAY IN THE BLEACHFIELD.

The operation of collecting cloth from bleachfields is generally long and tedious. A novel way of facilitating it has been recently introduced at a large linen-bleaching works of M. Duchesne-Fonrnet at Le Breuil-en-Ange (Calvados) by the managing engineer, M. Dupuy. From the account in La Nature, we learn that ea«h piece of cloth is 100 metres long (say, 333 ft.) and about thirty-seven acres of ground may be covered. M. Dapuy had long thought of constructing a railway with special mechanism and has had a line made along the meadows, crossing the ends of the lines of cloth j with a Siemens dynamoelectric machine and collecting apparatus in one vehicle, a set of Faure accumulators, giving the motor force, in another (the tender), and a series of trucks for the cloth. The line is 500 metres in length and has twentyone branches. The train goes to the fields empty. On stopping, the machine sets in motion the collecting apparatus, to which one end of a piece oi cloth is brought. The pieces are previously connected end to end, so that the work goes on continuously. The cloth passes into the locomotive truck, and thence,, over rollers, to a truck attached, in which a man sits to guide it. Thus, one man will collect 5,000 metres of cloth in half an hour, an operation formerly taking eleven hours. The train, when loaded, carries 10,000 metres (over 33,000 ft.) of cloth. The machinery is very easily wprkedj Moving a lever one way or (the other varies the speed of travelling ; a second lever serves for reversal} and a third to connect the dynamo either wish the locomotive or the collecting apparatus. The Faure accumulators in the tender (which are of the Regnier type large model) are arranged on three shelves and in hampers containing two each. They are sixty in number, and the weight is 500 kilogrammes (1201b.) They are charged with the current of the Gramme machine, which has been used since 1879 in lighting the works. The system, which has been in work i about two months, has given entire satisfaction.

South Australia offers XlO.Opafrr the discovery of a payable coalfiettf. ** ' - last year the Lifeboat Institution in England and Wales had 275 boats under their management, and during the year the boats were launched 374 times. They succeeded in saving 1121 lives and 33 vessels. Since the institution has been •tarted.the boats have saved 28,724 lives, and £570,000 has been spent on the life, boat stations. She institution has voted 95 2old medals, 948 silver medals, and £70,200 in pecuniary awards for saving tofefcom shipwreck. During last year, low, the' receipts of the institution! •mounted to £36,416, while the expenditure was £37,781.