Oct. 12, 1888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



397 



possible to obtain the same high economy in working by 

 employing a large potential difference and by sending a 

 small current through all the trains in series instead of 

 running the trains in parallel as is done on the Portrush, 

 Blackpool, Brighton, and Bessbrook tramways. 



This series system of propelling electric trains was, 

 oddly enough, entirely ignored in all the discussions that 

 have taken place this year at the Institution of Civil 

 Engineers and at the Institution of Mechanical 

 Engineers regarding the relative cost of working 

 tramways by horses, by a moving rope, and by 

 electricity ; and yet this series system is actually at 

 work in America, as you will see from an instantaneous 

 photograph, which I will now project on the screen of a 

 series electric tramway in Denver, Colerado ; and a series 

 electric tramway 1 2 miles long, on which 40 cars are to 

 be run, is in course of construction in Columbus, Ohio. 

 The first track on which electric trams were run in 

 series was the experimental " Telpher Line," erected in 

 Glynde in 1883, under the superintendence of the late 

 Professor Fleeming Jenkin, Professor Perry, and myself, 

 for the automatic electric transport of goods. The 

 large wall diagram shows symbolically, in the crudest 

 form, our plan of series working ; the current follows a 

 zigzag path through the contact pieces, and when a train 

 enters any section the contact piece is automatically re- 

 moved and the current now passes through the motor 

 on that train instead of through the contact piece. The 

 Series Electrical Traction Syndicate are now developing 

 our idea, but it has received its greater development in 

 the States, where the Americans are employing it 

 instead of spending time proving, a priori, that the 

 automatic contact arrangements could never work. 



In addition to the small waste of power and con- 

 sequent diminished cost of constructing the conductors 

 that lead the current into and out of passing trains, the 

 series system has another marked advantage. Some years 

 ago we pointed out that when an electric train was running 

 down-hill, or when it was desired to stop the train, there 

 was no necessity to apply a brake and waste the energy 

 f the moving train in friction, because the electric 

 motor could, by turning a handle, be converted into a 

 dynamo, and the train could be slowed or stopped by 

 its energy being given up to all the other trains running 

 on the same railway, so that the trains going downhill 

 helped the trains going uphill — the stopping trains helped 

 th? stopping trains. At that time we suggested de- 

 tafed methods of carrying out this economical mutual 

 ait arrangement, whether the trains were running on 

 thi parallel or on the series system. But there is this 

 difference, that whereas on the parallel system it is only 

 wlien a train is running fairly fast that it can help other 

 trains, the series system has the advantage that, when a 

 motor is temporarily converted into a dynamo by the 

 reversal of the connections of its stationary magnet, the 

 slowing train can help all the other trains even to the 

 vtfry last rotation of its wheels. 

 1 Brakes that save the power instead of wasting it are 

 [ purely English extraction, but their conception has 

 jcently come across the Atlantic with such a strong 

 ankee accent that it might pass for having been born 

 id bred on the States. 



1 Economy is one feature that gives electric traction their 



£ht to claim your attention, safety is another. This 



>del telpher line worked on the post head contac' 



tern is so arranged that no two trains ever run into 



: another, for in addition to each of the three trains 



being provided with an automatic governor which cuts off 

 electric power from a train when that train is going too 

 fast, the line is divided into five sections connected 

 together electrically in such a way that as long as a 

 train is on any section A no power is provided to the 

 section B behind, so that if a train comes into section B 

 it cannot move on as long as the train in front is on 

 section A. Whenever a train — it may be even a 

 runaway electric locomotive — enters a blocked section 

 it finds all motive power withdrawn from it quite 

 independently of the action of signalmen, guard, or 

 engine driver, even if either of the latter two men 

 accompany the train, which they do not in the case 

 of telpherage ; no fog, nor colour blindness, nor dif- 

 erent codes of signals on different lines, nor mistakes 

 arising from the exhausted nervous condition of over- 

 worked signalmen can with our system produce a 

 collision. Human fallibility, in fact, is eliminated while 

 the ordinary system of blocking means merely giving an 

 order to stop, and whether this is understood or intelli- 

 gently carried out is only settled by the happening or 

 non-happening of a subsequent collision, our automatic 

 block acts as if the steam were automatically cut off, 

 nay, it does more than this, it acts as if the fires were 

 put out in an ordinary locomotive and all the coal taken 

 away, since it is quite out of the power of the engine driver 

 to re-start the electric train until the one in front is at a 

 safe distance ahead. 



The photograph now seen on the screen shows the 

 general appearance of the Glynde line, which has recently 

 been much extended in length by its owners, the Sussex 

 Portland Cement Company, and a telepher line wilh 

 automatic blocking on the principles I have described is 

 about to be constructed between the East Pool tin mine, 

 in Cornwall, and the stamps. There will be four trains 

 running, each consisting of 33 skeps containing 3 cwt. 

 each, so that the load carried by each train will be about 

 five tons. 



It may be interesting to mention that the last difficulty 

 in telpherage, which consisted in getting a proper 

 adhesion between the driving wheel of the locomotive 

 and the wire rope, has now been overcome. The history 

 of the telpher locomotives is the history of steam loco- 

 motives over again, except that we never tried to fit the 

 electric locomotives with legs, as was proposed in the 

 early days for steam locomotives. It is a tedious, dis- 

 couraging history, but it is so easy to be wise when 

 criticising the past, so difficult to be wise when prospect- 

 ing the future. Gripping wheels of all kinds, even the 

 india-rubber tires used for the last three years have all 

 been abandoned in favour of simple, slightly loose, 

 cheap iron tires, which wear for a very long time, and 

 give a very perfect grip when the bar supporting the 

 electro-motor is so pivoted, pendulum wise, to the 

 framework of the locomotive that the weight of the 

 motor no longer makes the locomotive jump in passing 

 the posts as it did until quite recently. 



After several years of experimenting, we have in 

 telpherage, I venture to think, at least a perfectly trust- 

 worthy, and, at the same time, a most economical method 

 of utilising distant steam or water power to automatically 

 transport our goods, and in time it may even be our 

 people, over hills and valleys, without roads or bridges, 

 and without interfering with the crops or the cattle, or 

 the uses to which the land may be put, over which the 

 telpher trains pursue their snakelike way ; we have, in 

 fact, the luxury of ballooning without its dangers. 



