Fig. 17. The Brennan gyroscopic mono-railway.—The car is electrically driven, and its equilibrium is maintained by the action of two gyroscopes, also electrically driven.
Mr Brennan's gyroscopic mono-railway was first shown, in a small size, at a conversazione of the Royal Society in 1907. Full-sized cars were constructed later, and one was seen at work during the Japan-British Exhibition of 1910. The distinguishing feature of the vehicle is the use of two gyroscopes (electrically driven), one horizontal and the other vertical, to maintain the car upright on a single rail, even when loaded unevenly and running at a fair speed round sharp curves. From one point of view, the gyroscopic car is no more wonderful than a spinning top, but the spectacle of a vehicle running steadily on a single rail was so extraordinary that the interest of the whole world was immediately aroused. Support was given to Mr Brennan's experiments by the India Office and the Colonial Office, on the ground that a railway which required only one rail, and was more or less independent of both curves and gradients, would be of great value in districts where the ordinary two-track railway might be both inconvenient and too costly. One drawback to the arrangement is the necessity of fitting each vehicle with gyroscopes, which are expensive and delicate pieces of apparatus. But the ingenuity of the invention is so great that Mr Brennan ought to reap the reward of seeing a gyroscopic railway in full operation before long.
Fig. 18. The 'Telpher' system of electrical locomotion adapted to the transport of materials in a factory. The 'car' is suspended from a girder and is operated by the driver in the same way as an electric car. (From Electrics.)
The only electric mono-railway actually at work is the 'hanging railway' at Elberfeld in Germany ([Fig. 13]). This railway is an evolution from the system of 'telpherage' which was devised in the very infancy of electric traction for the transport of goods. The root idea is to make the overhead wire carrying the current the track rail as well, the whole contrivance—rails and cars—being suspended from girders or cables supported by a series of standards or bridges. At Elberfeld the cars pass over streets and also over canals. There are no signs, however, that the 'hanging railway' will have any imitators. In appearance and in cost of construction and operation it does not seem to have any conspicuous advantages over a double-track overhead railway. The system of telpherage is therefore likely to be confined to the carriage of goods from one part of a factory to another, and (in the form of cable-ways) to the handling of materials in mines and other extensive engineering works. For such purposes it is having an increasingly extended application.