ELECTRIC LIGHT ON THE RAILWAY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 6192, 13 December 1881, Page 3

ELECTRIC LIGHT ON THE RAILWAY.

The Brighton Railway Company, which of ite years has been a pioneer of improvements

the iron road, ran a special train from Vie

teria to Brighton and back tho other day with a saloon carriage lighted by stored electricity. The event, noteworthy in itself, may come to

possess an historical interest, since there is no doubt that it was the lirst time, either in the Old World or the New, that accumulated electrical energy had been so employed. It wai only a few months since M. Faure sent to Sir William Thomson his little box of lead plates: coated with red oxide and fully charged with electricity. The great British physicist saw at once its capabilities, and now every day seems to be bringing to lightsome new application of this the simplest of all apparatus ever designed by genius. The Pullman car, on which the experiment under notice was made, carried beneath it on a shelf some 32 small metal boxes, technically cells, each of which contained leaden plates coated with the oxide known as red lead. Nothing less pretentious or more inert in outward appearance could well be imagined. Yet there was stored up in those sheets of lead an amount of force which, if it could be suddenly liberated, would vastly exceed the power of any storm of tropical lightning. A steamengine had been at work on the previous night producing a current of electricity, which, in some mysterious manner, had hid itself away in the folds of the metal and beneath the cloak of red oxide, but was ready at any instant to give back in the form of light or of force the energy that had created it. Twelve of Mr Swan's little incandescent lamps were fixed to the roof of tho carriage, and all that was necessary when the train passed through a tunnel, or when darkness came on, was to turn a switch, and instantaneously a mild, steady, and brilliant light filled the saloon. From the point of view of the traveller the experiment was completely successful; a superior illumination could hardly be desired ; and if it bo true, as possibly sanguine electricians assert, that this storage can be effected at a smaller cost than oil, the pleasant trip to Brighton may have wide-reaching effects.