Every-day Science: Volume 7. The Conquest of Time and Space

by Henry Smith Williams; Edward Huntington Williams

THIRD RAILS AND TROLLEYS

At the same time an Englishman named Leo Daft, then living in America, was making some important experiments with motors for the purpose of driving machinery, these motors being operated from central power-stations located at distant points. Mr. Daft constructed an electric locomotive, and in November, 1883, constructed what was known as the Saratoga and Mount MacGregor Railroad. This railroad was twelve miles in length and included many steep grades. The locomotive, which hauled a regular passenger-car, received the current from a central rail. The year following Mr. Daft built and equipped a small road on one of the long piers of Coney Island, which carried something like forty thousand passengers in one season. It was an improvement over the Siemens electric railway established in Germany in 1881—which, however, was the first road ever established.

The following year the inventor began the equipment of the Baltimore Union Passenger Railway Company, a line that ran a distance of about two miles and reached an elevation of one hundred and fifty feet above the city of Baltimore. This road was put into regular operation in 1886, and was the second electric street railway in America for carrying on regular passenger service.

The Baltimore Union Railway had several novel and important features, one of them being the equipment of part of the line with an overhead-trolley service, the practical importance of which had been demonstrated shortly before by Van Depoele. The projector, Mr. Daft, also built several other lines in different parts of the country, constantly improving upon his earlier efforts, sometimes using two overhead trolley wires, with two trolley contacts, thus doing away with the use of the track as a means of current supply, or for use as part of the circuit. Although in recent years double overhead trolleys have largely disappeared, some of them are still in use both in America and in Europe.

Van Depoele was a Belgian who had come to America in 1869. Although primarily a cabinet-maker, he had a great liking for the study of electricity, and devoted all his spare time and money to efforts to solve the problem of practical street-car propulsion. In 1883, at the Industrial Exposition at Chicago, he operated a car by electricity, using an overhead-trolley system somewhat similar to Daft's. By 1885, he had made sufficient progress to construct a line one mile long for carrying passengers from the railway station to the Annual Exhibition grounds at Toronto, Canada. On a single track he operated three cars and a motor, carrying an average of ten thousand passengers daily, his train sometimes attaining a speed of thirty miles an hour. For receiving the current he used an underrunning trolley and pole very similar to the form now in common use, this being one of the first instances of employing this particular method of receiving the current. In this system an insulated track was used for returning the current.

Van Depoele's next venture was the equipment of an electric railway at South Bend, Indiana, on which five separate cars were operated at one time—a thing supposed by many to be impossible. The cars of this road were equipped with motors placed under the cars instead of above them, thus saving valuable seating-space. In place of the underrunning trolley and pole, however, the current was taken from the overhead wire by means of a flexible cable. Later Van Depoele invented an underrunning trolley and pole, taking out the original patents. His claims to priority were contested eventually, but they were sustained by the United States courts.

At this time there were at least a score of inventors whose work added something of importance to the solution of the problem of electric traction. But without belittling others, it is probably only justice to say that the work of Frank J. Sprague, a one-time lieutenant in the United States Navy, marks the beginning of the modern era of street railways. In 1888, after a period of struggle and a series of disheartening disasters, Mr. Sprague and his associates opened an electric line for the Union Passenger Railway of Richmond, Va., which "forms a landmark in the history of this industrial development." Over a line of road with grades at that time considered impossible, thirty cars were put into use at the same time, the contract for the equipment calling for its completion in ninety days. The success of this enterprise, when on the opening day more electric cars were operated than in all the rest of America together, settled forever the question of the practicality of electric street railways, as well as many of the questions of the practical application of the current, thanks to Sprague's inventive genius.

This road was an overhead trolley-wire system, with an underrunning trolley held in place by the now-familiar trolley pole. The number of difficulties that had to be solved in perfecting this apparently simple piece of apparatus is shown by the statement of Mr. Sprague that "probably not less than fifty modifications of trolley wheels and poles were used before what is known as the 'universal movement' type was adopted."

In this connection the origin of the word "trolley" is interesting. It seems to have been corrupted from the word "troller" by the workmen of a Kansas City car-line. On this line an overhead wire was used, the travelling carriage taking the current from the wire being known as the "troller." The employees of the road, however, shortly corrupted "troller" into "trolley"; and "trolley" it has remained ever since.

As in the case of Van Depoele, whose perfection of the underrunning trolley was contested legally, Sprague's great contribution to electric traction, the suspension of the motor directly upon the axle, had finally to be sustained by the United States courts. Sprague's method was to hang the motor under the car directly upon the axle, by an extension or solid bearing attached directly to the motor. This plan of constructing the motor, together with numerous other improvements, principally in the direction of lightness, simplicity, and adaptability, soon superseded all pre-existing methods of construction. Thus Van Depoele's method of taking the current from the wire, and Sprague's method of utilizing it in the propulsion of the car, must be regarded as epoch-marking steps in the history of electric traction. Sprague's invention demonstrated the validity of his contention, now universally accepted, that motors should be placed under each car instead of being used on locomotives.