THE CONQUEST OF TIME AND SPACE 



THIRD RAILS AND TROLLEYS 



At the same time an Englishman named Leo Daft, 

 then living in America, was making some important 

 experiments with motors for the purpose of driving 

 machinery, these motors being operated from central 

 power-stations located at distant points. Mr. Daft 

 constructed an electric locomotive, and in November, 

 1883, constructed what was known as the Saratoga and 

 Mount MacGregor Railroad. This railroad was twelve 

 miles in length and included many steep grades. The 

 locomotive, which hauled a regular passenger-car, 

 received the current from a central rail. The year 

 following Mr. Daft built and equipped a small road on 

 one of the long piers of Coney Island, which carried 

 something like forty thousand passengers in one season. 

 It was an improvement over the Siemens electric railway 

 established in Germany in 1881 — which, however, was 

 the first road ever established. 



The following year the inventor began the equipment 

 of the Baltimore Union Passenger Railway Company, a 

 line that ran a distance of about two miles and reached 

 an elevation of one hundred and fifty feet above the city 

 of Baltimore. This road was put into regular operation 

 in 1886, and was the second electric street railway in 

 America for carrying on regular passenger service. 



The Baltimore Union Railway had several novel and 

 important features, one of them being the equipment of 

 part of the line with an overhead- trolley service, the 

 practical importance of which had been demonstrated 

 shortly before by Van Depoele. The projector, Mr. 



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