TKANKACTIONS OV SECTION G. 757 



' standardised accumulators,' to he supplied to the owners of electrical vehicles at 

 depots on production of a subscription ticket, and the Engineering Standards 

 Committee lias appointed a sub-committee to consider the question. Motor cars 

 an; now used by some of the railway companies as feeders to their lines, and also 

 in competition with tramway lines. 



The increasing use of motor cars renders more than ever necessary the regula- 

 tion of traflic iu crowded thoroughfares, n subject which will doubtless be dealt 

 with iu the paper on ' The Problem of Modern Street Tratfic,' which Colonel 

 Crompton is about to read before this Section of the British Association. 



The use of motor-driven vehicles for road traffic is so intimately associated 

 with improvements i-i prime movers that it will interest the members of this 

 Section to be reminded of the opinion expressed more than twenty years ago by 

 Sir Frederick Bramwell, F.R.S., Past President Inst.C.E., who presided over the 

 Meeting of the British Association at Bath in 1888. In a paper read before this 

 Section at the Jubilee Meeting of our Association at York in 1881, and afterwards 

 printed i« e.rtenso, Sir Frederick Bramwell said : ' However much the Mechanical 

 Section of the British Association may to-day contemplate with regret even the mere 

 distant prospect of the steam-engine becoming a thing of the past, I very much doubt 

 whether those who meet here fifty years hence will then speak of that motor except 

 in the character of a curiosity to be found in a museum.' In a letter addressed to 

 the President of this Association on July 2 last, Sir Frederick Bramwell drew 

 attention to the largely increasing development of internal-combustion engines, 

 and expressed a feeling of assurance that, although steam-engines might be at 

 work in 1931, the output in that year would be small of steam as compared with 

 internal-combustion engines. 



To keep alive the interest of the Association in this subject, Sir Frederick 

 Bramwell has kindly ofl'ered, and the Council has accepted, the sum of 50/. for 

 investment in 2^ per cent, self-accumulative Consols, the resulting sum to be paid 

 as an honorarium to a gentleman to be selected by the Council to prepare a paper 

 having Sir Frederick's utterances in 1881 as a sort of text, and dealing with the 

 whole question of the prime movers of 1931, and especially with the then relation 

 between steam-engines and internal-combustion engines. That paper will doubt- 

 less prove to be a very valuable contribution to the proceedings of this Association, 

 and one can only regret that many of those assembled here to-day cannot hope to 

 be present when it is read, and to listen to an account of the nearest approach 

 which has then been made towards the production of a perfect prime mover. 



Electric Tramicaiji and Light Raihcaijs. 



I now pass to the application of electricity to tramways, and iu so doing may 

 quote from the careful expression of opinion given in this town from this Chair 

 twenty years ago by the late Sir (then Mr.) James Brunlees, President of the 

 Institution of Civil Engineers : 'The working of railways by electricity has not 

 advanced further than to justify merely a brief reference to it in this paper as 

 among the possibilities, perhaps the probabilities, of the not distant future.' 



It was stated in a paper read by Mr. P. Dawson in April last before the 

 Tramways and Light Bailways Association, that the total route-length of electric 

 tramways and light railways in the United Kingdom, either completed, under 

 construction, or authorised, amounted at the end of last year to 3,000 miles, the 

 length of single track being 5,000 miles, on which some 0,000 cars were running. 



It cannot, in my opinion, be regarded as being fair to the railway companies — 

 which have to pay large sums of money for the land on which their lines have 

 been constructed — to have to compete with tramways which are laid along the 

 public roads without any payment being made for their use. The roads are dis- 

 figured by aerial conductors and the supporting posts by which the electric 

 current is conveyed to the cars, except in those comparatively rare instances in 

 which the conduit system is used ; nor can it be denied that tramways greatly 

 interfere with the use of the roads for ordinary traffic. The effect of electrolytic 

 action on iron pipes laid beneath the roads is still undergoing investigation. 



