= eon 
G.—ENGINEERING. 135 
Turning now to another field, we find that in railway traction the 
supremacy of steam is maintained. Higher pressures and the use of 
superheating have helped to hold it, and the most progressive locomotive 
engineers have experiments in progress which may carry practice further 
along these lines. Much attention has been paid to the Diesel engine 
as a possible alternative, but so far the number of Diesel locomotives 
that have found employment in main-line working is a negligible propor- 
tion of the whole. If the steam locomotive is to disappear, there is no 
indication that its place will be taken by an internal-combustion rival. 
What is much more likely is that it will in time be driven out—wholly or in 
part—hby electric traction, as Lord Weir’s Committee has recently suggested 
for the British railways. But electrification will mean that the prime- 
mover is still steam, though acting at a central station—except, of course, 
in countries which have available reserves of hydraulic power. 
Such a country is Switzerland, and there the transformation from 
_ the steam locomotive to electric traction is already almost complete. 
The playground of Europe has lost little or nothing of its charm through 
becoming dotted with hydraulic power houses. Already its exports to 
SEN Hee Me 
less favoured neighbours include many million units of electric energy 
which it delivers through the graceful catenaries that girdle its mountains 
and span its valleys. The shrewd inhabitants doubtless demand a 
remunerative price for exported electricity, just as they quite properly 
do for the other amenities of their delightful land. A time may come 
when subterranean stores of coal and oil run low, but so long as the sun 
shines and the rain falls mankind will be able to continue its struggle 
for existence, though it may suffer a change in the centre of gravity of 
its industrial life. Industry will learn, like the Psalmist, to look to the 
hills from whence cometh its help, and Geneva will be more than ever 
the natural rallying point of a community of nations, physically linked 
by a comprehensive ‘ grid’ on which they depend for whatever modicum 
of light and power they are still permitted to enjoy. 
For road motors, the internal-combustion engine is, of course, 
supreme ; it has created as well as supplied a vast demand. Mr. Ricardo, 
writing in 1928? said that the output of high-speed internal-combustion 
engines exceeded by more than ten times the total horse-power of all 
_ power stations, ships and railways. A statement at the World Power 
_ Conference, held in Berlin in 1930, gave the number of motor cars on the 
_ world’s roads as thirty millions, with an output of at least 600,000,000 
racer I have not attempted to check these estimates; I do 
not suspect them of exaggeration ; I am only thankful that many of the 
_ engines referred to spend a great part of their time in garages and parking 
"places and are not in a state of continuous activity. They have come 
into existence to meet a new need ; they do not, for the most part, enter 
into competition with the older uses of steam, except in small ships or by 
diverting traffic from the railways to the roads. In their own special 
field—the roads and the air—they have an unchallenged monopoly. And, 
indeed, they well deserve it. We ought, I think, to pay tribute to the 
constructive talent that has made these engines the convenient and 
_ ? 4H. R. Ricardo on ‘ Light High-Speed Internal-Combustion Engines,’ Institution 
of Ciyil Engineers, Engineering Conference, 1928. 
