ELECTRICAL ADVANCE IN THE PAST TEN YEARS. 133 



tunnel traffic in cities. A new underground road is now being con- 

 structed in London, which, when completed, will be a splendid example 

 of the latest methods of the distribution and application of electricity 

 to train service. 



Indeed, electricity seems destined at no distant day to play an impor- 

 tant part in revolutionizing passenger traffic between large centers of 

 population. The facility with which electric service may be superposed 

 on ordinary steam roads will greatly further this development. The 

 work with the third-rail system, undertaken by one of our prominent 

 railway organizations, has abundantly demonstrated the practicability 

 of such superposition. The future will wituess the growing substitu- 

 tion of either single motor cars or two or three coupled cars for long, 

 heavy trains drawn by locomotives, and a more frequent service will 

 result. There is an eventual possibility of higher average speeds, since 

 stops will not consume much time, and the time required to recover the 

 speed after a stop will be much less than at present. There will be no 

 annoyance due to escaping steam, smoke, or cinders; no sparks to cause 

 forest or brush fires; no stopping to change engines nor for taking up 

 water or coal. The locomotive will be supplanted by electric motors 

 driving the axles of the cars as in street-railway service. Cheap fuel 

 can be used to generate the x)ower in the electric stations and the best 

 conditions for economy of fuel maintained. Where water power is 

 available within 30 or 40 miles it may be transmitted to the railway 

 line and used instead of power obtained from coal. 



The present outlook, then, is most encouraging, so far as electric- 

 railway extension is concerned; and, just as in electric lighting the 

 foundations of present practice were laid fifteen or twenty years ago, 

 so it may be said that the foundations of the railway practice of twenty 

 years hence can be found in the work of to-day. In fact, great enter- 

 prises are now being planned and undertaken which will mean much to 

 the future of the electric railroad. 



Besides the work which is thus going on, and in which the electrical 

 forces may be publicly witnessed in full operation, there are now other 

 forms of industry in which the part played by electricity is not dis- 

 tinctly evident. Thus enormous amounts of crude copper are annually 

 refined by electrolysis, with the result that a nearly ijure metal is 

 obtained, where formerly impurities lessened the value of the copper. 

 Il^ot only is this the case, but in some instances amounts of the precious 

 metals, gold and silver, have been separated in the refining sufficient 

 to pay the cost of the process. This work is all comparatively recent 

 in its development. 



The heating power of the electric current is now also utilized in a 

 variety of ways. Electric welding machinery has been x)ut into service 

 either for accomplishing results which were not possible to be obtained 

 before its development, or to improve the work and lessen the cost. 



Here again the part played by the electric current sometimes leaves 



