EDISON'S ELECTRIC RAILWAY.

Thames Advertiser, Volume XXV, Issue 714, 15 February 1892, Page 3

EDISON'S ELECTRIC RAILWAY.

Edison claims that he can get one horse power of electrical energy out of a single pound weight of coal,, whereas gtenui requires six pounds weight of dear coal to get the same power out of it, He saya that eleven years ago he ran a tram ■40 miles au hour by electricity on his own three mile track in Menlo Park. He can now, according to his own account, run as many as may he wasted, j from. 100 to 200 miles au hour, between' Chicago and Milwaukee,.. during the World's Fair. If wo may credit him, the whole system of railway travelling is on the eve of a revolution. Steam will be discarded with as. much contempt as-would ba the notion of reviv* ing the old stage coach. With the exit of steam there will disappear the locomotive engine. The driving power will be new. The electric current will pass from the stationary engine to a central rail between the tracks, and thence through the mechanism attached to the bottom of the cars each having its motor. Three stationary engines would be needed, with 10,000 or 12,000. horse power. Each would run the whole Pennsylvania railway system between Sew York and Philadelphia—freight, local, and expresß trains. But under this system long trains,will be things of the past. Edison intends to run a train of two cars every 10 minutes, followiue; each other as do the tram cars. But when people talk of railway travelling at 200 miles an hour one begins to ask, What is to become of the wheels of the carriages and the tracks'they run on? Somebody asked Edison on this point, " Can equipment he devised which will stand the strain of such a system at full speed?" The answer may be taken for what it k worth. He claims that the depreciation of rolling stock and road bed under electricity is much less than under steam propulsion. Every exertion of power is of tho nature of au explosion; aud when •we take into consideration the fact that 100 or 500 engines are on a road like tho Peunsylvania at one tims, each exercising a different degree of its explosive powers, the depreciation is a great factor, .But with electricity, he says, it is always the smooth rotary motion, imparted in the same wny by the same meaus at tho stationary ongines. And then he adds: " Full speed 'on this system is—or I see no reason why it should not be —200 miles an hour, But for practical purposes I feel sure that a 101b rail on a ballasted track would stand a speed of 100 miles an hour,"