SHALL WE TRAVEL ONE HUNDRED MILES AN HOUR?

New Zealand Mail, 21 July 1892, Page 37

SHALL WE TRAVEL ONE HUNDRED MILES AN HOUR?

There is not muoh probability of attaining regular and continuous speeds of 100 miles per hour with our present locomotives. Their fire-boxes—which perform the same functions for the machines that their stomachs do for animals—are, with the present system of construction, necss. sarily contracted in size. The weight of the whole locomotive being fixed, the dimensions of the different parts are also limited. It is proverbially dangerous to prophesy when you are not quite Euro, and if prognostications are based upon calculations the mendacity of figures may rise up hereafter to deprive the prophet of all honour. Fast running is largely a question of steam production. Given a boiler which will generate enough steam, and the other problems are of comparatively ea9y solution. The difficulty is to get the boiler sufficiently large within the limits of size and weight to which It must bo oon» fined. It will be safe to say that to be able to travel continuously at 100 miles per hour we must have either boilers or fuel which will generate more tteam in agiven time than those we are using now do, or our engines must use less steam to do the same work, or, what is more probable still, we must have all three of these features combined. In the locomotive of the future the action of the reciprocating parts will probably be more perfectly balanced thaa it now is ; coupling rods will either be dispensed with altogether, or their risk of breakage will ba lessened by placing the driving-wheels near together, and both this danger and the disturbing tffeot of the reciprocrating parts will be lessened by increasing the size of the wheels. To enable the engine—or, rather, its journals—to “run cool,” the journals and their bearings will be increased in size so as to have ample surface to resist wear. Coming events are, however, already casting their shadows before them, and there are indications that the improvements which are here foreshadowed, or some of them, are in process of evolution.—” Speed in Locomotives, in Soribner.