lENCE 



LEntered at the Post-OfBce of New York, N.Y., as Second-Class Matter.J 



A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER OF ALL THE ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



Eighth Year. 

 Vol. XV. No. 367. 



NEW YORK, February 14, 1890. 



Single Copies, Ten Cents. 

 S3. 50 Per Year, in Advance. 



VS^IRE-ROPE TRASrWAYS. 



V^IEE-EOPE tramways, as a means of cheap transpoitation, are 

 too well known to require any long dissertation on their advan- 

 tages. As feeders to established systems of railroad or water 

 communication, their low cost of construction through countries 

 where, from the rugged contour of the surface, ordinary rail- 

 road or even wagon-road building would be scarcely practicable, 

 except with long and costly detoms, has always made them 

 very attractive to the miner and quarryman, to whose use in 

 this country fhey have been heretofore almost exclusively con- 

 fined. The earliest tramways of this kind which were success- 

 fully introduced consisted of a single, moving, endless rope. 



country. In Europe, however, while these single-rope lines 

 were also first in vogue, the double-rope system has of late 

 years almost entirely supplanted them, and has established 

 itself, as a general means of transportation, to an extent hardly 

 yet dreamt of here. 



Railroad companies have adopted these lines as regular 

 feeders to their main roads, and laws have been promulgated in 

 different European countries regulating their construction and 

 traffic, the same as for ordinary railroads. Tliis extension of 

 their application is due principally, if not entirely, to~ the 

 perfection attained under the Bleichert system, some features 

 of which are shown in the accompanying illustrations. While 

 the individual loads to be carried by the single-rope lines 



THE BLEICHERT WIRE-ROPE TRAMWAY, 1,000 FOOT SPAN, OVER THE WEINBACH VALLEY. 



from which the loads were suspended. In one system the 

 buckets or carriers are attached to saddles, which ride on the 

 rope, but can be separated from it. In another system the 

 carriers are attached permanently to the rope. But in each of 

 these systems one and the same rope both supports and moves 

 the load. 



Tliis fact is really the reason that aerial transportation has 

 hitherto not become general in the United States. Lines con- 

 structed with the single moving rope, while very efficient for 

 certain purposes, are not available for general use as a 

 means of transportation, because of their limited capacity for 

 carrying individual loads, which in no case can exceed 300 

 pounds, and in practice have been much smaller. The original 

 single-rope systems are the ones chiefly used hitherto in this 



should, for convenience and economy, preferably not exceed 

 150 poimds. and are. in fact, seldom over 100 pounds, the 

 lines of this system are adaptable to individual loads up to 

 1.000 pounds each, and in special cases even heavier loads have 

 been carried. 



Single-rope systems of tramways, where the moving rope 

 carries the load, must necessarily move slowly: otherwise there 

 is great danger that the rope may jump out of the carrying- 

 sheaves. These carrying-sheaves are very shallow, so as to 

 permit the passage over them cf the saddle or clip. The 

 dropping of the rope from the supporting sheaves has always 

 been a source of more or less trouble and expense in operating 

 these lines. In this system this trouble never occurs, since 

 the stationarv cairving-cable has no tendencv to leave the saddle 



