TELPHERAGE 255 



been practically carried out. We have bad trains on a scale as 

 large as I am prepared to recommend, running at the highest 

 speed I have contemplated. 1 I trust it will be clear to you, 

 from this description, that what I have contemplated and real- 

 ised is not an electric railway destined to compete with steam 

 railways in conveying goods and passengers at high speeds, 

 neither is it a new form of communication destined for small 

 parcels and high speeds ; it is simply a cheap means of convey- 

 ing heavy goods which, like coal or grain, can be carried in 

 buckets or sacks, each containing two or three hundredweight. 

 The speed on a telpher line will be that of a cart, and the 

 object we aim at is to cart goods at a cheaper rate and more 

 conveniently than with horses. I assume that you all know 

 that an electric motor is a machine which will run so as to exert 

 power whenever an electric current is passed through it. You 

 also know that a machine called a ' dynamo,' driven by a steam- 

 engine or other source of power, will produce an electric current 

 which may be conveyed along a suspended and insulated rod, 

 and used to drive an electric motor. In describing the details 

 of my system, the first point to be explained is how the current 

 produced by the dynamo, and conveyed along a single line, is 

 taken from that line and directed round the motor. 



In endeavouring to realise this idea, the first thought which 

 occurred to me was that of dividing the line into lengths, equal 

 to the length of the train, so that, using the train to bridge over 

 a gap between two sections at different potentials, the current 

 could be conveyed from the leading to the trailing wheels of the 

 train round the motor. This idea is employed in the model 

 now shown ; but, in the first form which suggested itself, the 

 gaps between the sections were opened by a switch worked by 

 the front of the train and closed by a switch worked by the end 

 of the train. The first model, which may have been seen by 

 some present working in Fitzroy Street, was made on this plan. 

 Trains driven in that way would all be coupled in series. The 

 present model is differently arranged ; there are no working 



1 A form of points for sidings and branch lines has been constructed, and 

 acts satisfactorily. The trains in the sidings are, at Weston, driven electri- 

 cally, but when a dangerous electromotive force is used this would be worked 

 bv hand. 



