Electric Lighting on Railways.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5282, 12 June 1895, Page 4

Electric Lighting on Railways.

An admirable trait of citizens of the United Statea is their readiness to learn, and their williognesa to admit superiority when they meet it. Stay-at-home Americans may, and doubtless doi indnlge in " blowing " about "the greatest country on airth, sir;" but when they travel they do not begrudge praise to the institutions and, achievements of other countries. The World's Transportation Commission from America, which is juat now on a visit to New Zealand, has for its president a Major Panghorn, who cheerfully admits that in one respect at least South Australian railways are a "wrinkle" ahead of the American. He remarked to a Melbourne

interviewer:—

•'On the South. Australian railways they have t>ot a system of electric lighting that is better than anything we have seen auywhere else in the world. They have succeeded in working their electric lighting on the cars by means of a dynamo run from the axle. We in America do it by a dynamo run from the engine and worked by steam. But oar plan, you see, takes steam from the engine, and so lessens its power for actual work. In South Australia this is avoided, and the motive power of the revolving axlea, which would otherwise be lost, is employed to work the dynamo.- It In simply splendid. And that is not all we learned about electric lighting on trains in South Australia. It is a wonderful system of electric accumulation they have there. On the train from Adelaide to Broken Hill, for instance, the journey being at night, the electrio lights are on all the time. Well, on the way back from Broken Hill to Adelaide,, this journey being in the day, electrical energy is being stored up, and enough is stored to light the train on its return journey from Adelaide to Broken Hill, without any electrician being in attendance to look aCter it, bo that they save the expense of an electrician every journey they make. Lighting by electricity on this system is actually less expensive than kerosene, and the light they get is the beat light I ever saw on a car."

We fear that after such an experience the Commission will consider the railway system of New Zealand quite rude and primitive ; but an open-minded gentleman like Major Panghorn may even find it possible to discover something that we do well; and he is not likely, we should think, to be misled by the statements of unpatriotic people who, because they happen to be in opposition to the Government,, condemn unsparingly everything done' or being done in the colony. We might well aßk, however, why a system of electrio lighting is not in vogue in our railway trains. ■• < ■• ) t „y