HOW TO TRAVEL LIKE LIGHTNING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVIII, Issue 5997, 5 February 1881, Page 7

HOW TO TRAVEL LIKE LIGHTNING.

Ax imaginative man, who subscribes himself "A Common Sense Engineer," proposes the following plan by which he holds it possible to transport freight and jiassengers by rail from New York to San Francisco in ten hours. What the freight and passengers •would be pood for when delivered lie does not pretend to say. The plan is this : "A fair rate of speed for a railway train is forty miles an hour. The distance from New York to San Francisco is, roughly, three thousand miles. I would divide this distance into thirty parts, with stations at every 100 miles. First a track, not differing greatly from the ordinary railroad track, should be laid for a hundred miles, and it is only necessary to study rapid transit according to my plan over this section of the road to understand how the whole system would work. Over the first track of 100 miles, and running over cannon balls upon the track, is another, say 90 miles long, on which, in turn, is another, SO miles long, and so on till on the whole system the freight and passenger train runs, it being of desired and practicable length. Suppose it is required to go from A to B, a distance of 100 miles ; the stable track over which all the others run is, of course, 100 miles long, and the first movable track upon it is 90 miles long. Let the first movable track be drawn by a stationary engine the remaining ten miles, whereby one of its extremities will reach B, and let us say that it takes fifteen minutes for it to move through the ten miles. In the meantime the track 80 miles long which runs on the track 90 miles long wili have been advanced ten miles by the motion of the 90 miles track, and will itself (either by means of a stationary engine or a locomotive) have advanced 10 miles on its own hook, so that in all it will have gone 20 miles in the fifteen minutes, and its extremity will reach B at the same time that B is reached by the 90 miles track. So with the 70, the CO, the 50 track, and up to the passengers and freight train, which will reach B as soon as the 90 mile track readies B—that is to say, in fifteen minutes, at the end of which it will have travelled about 100 miles. Perhaps the "following statement will make the matter clearer. -.X et "S call the 90 mile track A, the SO mile track B; an <l so Ol >- Ais drawn ten miles, carrying w'*' l jt B for t]le same l,istauce. But B has"'aTß°-Si°i ° f its <" v] i a "d travels over ten miles onifeUS™ ll account. It has therefore gone twenty miles." with a 10 mile motion of its own over B w'. lic h draws it along, has gone 30 miles, D 10, Ib. 50, F GO, a 70, H 80, I 90, J, which is the passenger and freight train, 100 miles, and all in fifteen minutes. The whole system of tracks need not be more than four or five feet in height. With sufficient power the scheme is practicable, aud with motors at present at our command it would work for short distances."—Boston Transcript.