SCIENCE & INVENTION.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIV, 31 December 1926, Page 6

SCIENCE & INVENTION.

(Per Press Association— Copyright.) PARIS, December 29. I The 16-wheeled electric locomotive, used at the inauguration of the new Paris-Vierzon service, hauled a 400-ton train 145 miles at an average speed of eighty-one miles per hour. Power was supplied hydro-electric-ally. The service forms a part of a comprehensive plan to render French railways independent of foreign coal. LONDON, Dec. 29. Early in January, an amazing motor car, already christened the mystery “S,” will be conveyed from the locked and guarded workshops at Wolverhampton, for test by Captaiu Segrave, for whom it has been constructed. The car is unlike any other car in the world. It is capable of a speed of 200 miles an hour. It has two separate engines, of 500 h.p. each, one just aft of the front axle, and the other vertically over the rear axle. The power of both engines is transmitted to a common three-speed gear-box, in the centre of the chassis. .he forward engine is started by compressed air, and when running, the driver starts the other from it, through a slipping clutch. When the revolutions synchronise, the engines are coupled up as one unit, and set the car in motion, in the ordinary way, through another clutch and gearbox. There' are three cooling radiators. An exhaustive test resulted in many alterations. One of the most tremendous problems is the directional stability. If the car swerves the slightest degree from the straight when travelling at the rate of 200 miles an hour, the immediate tendency is for the whole car to spin round and round on its own axis. Owing to there being no place in England where this terrific speed is attainable, the car will be shipped to America, to attempt a world recordbreaking performance on Dayton Beach, Florida, in February.