Patea & Waverley Press FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1920. ELECTRIC RAILWAYS.

Patea Mail, Volume XLIV, 26 November 1920, Page 2

Patea & Waverley Press FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1920. ELECTRIC RAILWAYS.

The recent coal strike and the knowledge that at any time at the sweet will of the Labour leaders there may be again a coal shortage seem to point out to the Public Works Department the urgent need for pushing on with the hy-dro-electric schemes in the Dominion with all x>ossil»le despatch. America just now affords a striking illustration of what can be done in (he way of hydro-electric-it the authorities like to put their shoulders to the wheel. In (he reconi electrification of (he Pacific Coast Division of the Chicago, Milwaukee, and SI. Thud Railway the United States has longest electric railway in the world, without (he aid of a single pound of coal. The line, which is ,1500 miles long, or rather more than three limes the distance between Auckland and Wellington, is run by current generated by a chain of waterfall plants, including one where the famous Snoqnalmie Falls thunder from a height of 270 feet. On the west side of the Cascade Mountains there are three hydro-electric plants which are interconnected, and have a combined generating capacity of 114,500 horse-power. This system, 800 miles long, is in (urn connected with a like system of equal capacity on the cast side of the Cascades, thus uniting some 1500 miles of transmission lines in one vast system. What this means from an economical point of view can be gauged from the fact that the locomotives now in use on the electrified railroads have released for service else where some 250 steam locomotives, and the railroad now hauls its total tonnage by electric power for approximately one-third of the cost of the same work when steam was used. The electrification of

the line has, in addition reduced the average time per train 22.5 per cent. Moreover, nearly 30 per cent, more tonnage can he handled in 80 per cent of the time it formerly took to handle less tonnage by steam, engines, thus increasing t#ie road’s capacity 50 pei- cent. One of the 3000-volt direct current gearless locomotives recently astonished the railroad world 'by winning a tug-of-war with two steam engines at Eric, Pennsylvania. One of these electric locomotives, the most powerful passenger locomotive known, takes the steepest grades on the line over the Rockies, drawing a ten-car passenger train without a helper. On level stretches it draws such a train at the rate of sixty miles an hour, and on a grade where there is a steady upward pull for 20 miles of 105 feet to the mile, the same locomotive keeps up a speed of twenty miles per hour. Compare this with the costly and slow train services in New Zealand, and the advantage of having the railways electrified will be at once apparent. It is stated that the saving on the zone in America that is now electrified goes to show that if ajl the railroads in America had been electrified by water-power in 1918 no less than 122,500,000 tons of coal would have been saved, or more than two-thirds of the coal at presentburned by the 63,000 steam locomotives used in that country. In addition to this, it is estimated that with no additional charge the electric railroads could carry one-fifth more revenue-producing freight than they do now. To continue the old steam engines in this country, therefore, with so much -water-power available and going to waste is to continue in an old-fashioned, out-of-date groove, a state of things entirely out of place in a prosperous country like New Zealand.