SCIENCE 



FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22, li 



PRACTICAL ELECTRIC-RAILWAY PROPULSION. 



It is a striking indication of the overcrowded surcharged state 

 of modern Hfe that events of extreme significance and momentous 

 importance take place without exciting more than a ripple on the 

 surface of its current, so rapid, deep, and vast it is. 



Such an instance is depicted in the accompanying illustration, 

 which is of the electric locomotor " Benjamin Franklin," with its 

 eight-car train, now running upon the Ninth Avenue Elevated Rail- 

 way in New York City. 



With these perfectly intelligible and merely fortuitous differences, 

 the service of the steam and electric train is identical. 



What the " Franklin " has achieved in its experimental work 

 may be briefly stated as follows : It has drawn eight empty cars — 

 making, with the locomotor, 122 tons in train — up a gradient of 

 nearly two per cent at 7+ miles per hour, developing, in so doing, 

 over 120 horse-power ; it has taken four cars up the same gradient, 

 with the average load of passengers, or 70 tons in train, at 15J 

 miles per hour, more than two miles faster than the schedule speed 

 of the steam-locomotives ; it has maintained speed of 30 and 25 

 miles per hour with trains of two and three unloaded cars. 



All this has been done without the slightest accident or delay of 



ELECTRIC MOTOR AND TRAIN OF 



ELEVATED RAILWAY. 



To be literally accurate, it should be said that the service is con- 

 fined to certain hours of the day, that only three or four cars are 

 used in it, and that passengers are only taken on at the termini ; 

 viz.. Fourteenth and Fiftieth Street stations. 



The reasons for these limitations are as follows ; Since the loco- 

 motor has to be switched from one end of the train to the other at 

 each terminus, only that portion of the day is available in which 

 the headway of the steam-trains, among which it runs, affords 

 sufficient time for the operation. In the many hundred miles that 

 the " Franklin " has made, it has never delayed a steam-train or 

 deranged their succession. The cause of not stopping at interme- 

 diate stations is, that, as the locomotor has at present no means of 

 utilizing the air-brakes, — though this lack is being provided for, 

 — the necessary reduction of speed near every station, to permit of 

 the trains being brought to rest by hand-brakes, would so trench 

 upon the time needed for switching, at each terminus, as to en- 

 danger delaying steam-trains, or sacrificing^rips to avoid so doing. 



any kind, and with every indication of the locomotor still being well 

 within its ultimate capacity. For facility, certainty, and promptness 

 of manipulation, nothing more could be asked for. 



Such a chapter of success as this, quite apart from its technical 

 and commercial significance, ought surely to have been fittingly 

 recognized. The first grand scale electric locomotor in the world's 

 history, and the first ever brought into direct competition with 

 steam-locomotives, after doing all that they do, and triumphantly 

 complying with every imposed condition, elicits little more from the 

 technical press than a few perfunctory allusions alike distinguished 

 for incompleteness and inaccuracy. 



The gist of one notice was dissatisfaction that the " Franklin," in 

 spite of its complete success, was not something else than what it 

 is, and an inane caution, that, notwithstanding its ready disposal of 

 every suggested test, and easy rivalling of the steam-locomotives in 

 all respects, it would be advisable to lay this practical, actual entity 

 on the shelf, and wait for the possibility of something better turning 



