Tramway Rail Imperfections.

Progress, Volume I, Issue 9, 2 July 1906, Page 242

Tramway Rail Imperfections.

The Commercial Motor says . — The English nation is a long-suffering one , so long as no reasonable alternative presents itself the grossest of nuisances are endured. The absence of more forcible and crystallised outward expressions of the deep-seated ob]ections to tramway rails, which undoubtedly exist, has been due to the ameliorating influences of the cheapened travelling facilities which have been provided during the last few years by the adoption of electric traction m so many parts of the United Kingdom. But we have to reiterate our plea for an awakening to a recognition of the fact that times are changing and that the motor omnibus has demonstrated its powers sufficiently to make the advocates of electric traction pause m their contemplated plans for extensions. Why our road surfaces should be delivered up to a system which is fraught with grave inconveniences for the community at large without due and careful deliberation upon the fact that electric traction is no longer unchallenged, is a question which will have to be satisfactorily answered and not evaded. The positive losses which have resulted from so many of these undertakings, and the paucity of the returns from the maionty of the remainder, will not be improved now that supporters of electric traction have to face competition with mechanical power, which is very different from the weak opposition of horsedrawn systems, and it is certainly open to question that tramcars will be accepted at all except where they are already established and m possession of the roads.

The fact that Mr. Thomas A. Edison has bought a cobalt mine in Ontario (says an American press agency telegram) has led to the disclosure that he is using cobalt in his new storage batteries in place of nickel and lead. This must lead to an unexpected demand for greater quantities of the mineral, and to sudden increase in the value of the land where it exists. A new source of wealth for Canada is thus opened.

The English railway companies have now to face an almost unconscious, but exceedingly sharp, competition, in the form of motor cars, in the conveyance of the rich, and it seems, as if the long-distance first-class passenger — the most remunerative to the railway company — will pass away. For the past half-year the Great Eastern

Railway alone carried 37.235 fewer first-class passengers than in the previous corresponding period ; and as this falhng-off in number was most noticeable in relation to Newmarket and other sporting centres, the conclusion drawn was that many persons who would otherwise have travelled by train went in their motor cars. At the halfyearly meeting of the company, Lord Claud Hamilton said • " Motor-car competition, I am afraid, is likely in the future to assume very serious proportions."