THE MOTOR OMNIBUS — RAILWAY MOTOR-CARS
The development of the motor-car has been phenomenal. Early in 1896 the only mechanically moved vehicles to be seen on our roads were the traction-engine, preceded by a man bearing a red flag, the steam-roller, and, in the towns, a few trams. To-day the motor is apparent everywhere, dodging through street traffic, or raising the dust of the country roads and lanes, or lumbering along with its load of merchandise at a steady gait.
As a purely speed machine the motor-car has practically reached its limit. With 100 h.p. or more crowded into a vehicle scaling only a ton, the record rate of travel has approached two miles in a minute on specially prepared and peculiarly suitable tracks. Even up steep hills such a monster will career at nearly eighty miles an hour.
Next to the racing car comes the touring car, engined to give sixty miles an hour on the level in the more powerful types, or a much lower speed in the car intended for quieter travel, and for people who are not prepared to face a big bill for upkeep. The luxury of the age has invaded the design of automobiles till the gorgeously decorated and comfortably furnished Pullman of the railway has found a counterpart in the motor caravan with its accommodation for sleeping and feeding. While the town dweller rolls along in electric landaulet, screened from wind and weather, the tourist may explore the roads of the world well housed and lolling at ease behind the windows of his 2,000-guinea machine, on which the engineer and carriage builder have lavished their utmost skill.
The taunt of unreliability once levelled—and with justice—at the motor-car, is fast losing its force, owing to the vast improvements in design and details which manufacturers have been stimulated to make. The motor-car industry has a great future before it, and the prizes therein are such as to tempt both inventor and engineer. Every week scores of patents are granted for devices which aim at the perfection of some part of a car, its tyres, its wheels, or its engines. Until standard types for all grades of motor vehicles have been established, this restless flow of ideas will continue. Its volume is the most striking proof of the vitality of the industry.
The uses to which the motor vehicle has been put are legion. On railways the motor carriage is catering for local traffic. On the roads the motor omnibus is steadily increasing its numbers. Tradesmen of all sorts, and persons concerned with the distribution of commodities, find that the petrol- or steam-moved car or lorry has very decided advantages over horse traction. Our postal authorities have adopted the motor mail van. The War Office looks to the motor to solve some of its transportation difficulties. In short, the "motor age" has arrived, which will, relatively to the "railway age," play much the same part as that epoch did to the "horse age." At the ultimate effects of the change we can only guess; but we see already, in the great acceleration of travel wherever the motor is employed, that many social institutions are about to be revolutionised. But for the determined opposition in the 'thirties of last century to the steam omnibus we should doubtless live to-day in a very different manner. Our population would be scattered more broadcast over the country instead of being herded in huge towns. Many railways would have remained unbuilt, but our roads would be kept in much better condition, special tracks having been built for the rapid travel of the motor. We have only to look to a country now in course of development to see that the road, which leads everywhere, will, in combination with the motor vehicle, eventually supplant, or at any rate render unnecessary, the costly network of railways which must be a network of very fine mesh to meet the needs of a civilised community.
In the scope of a few pages it is impossible to cover even a tithe of the field occupied by the ubiquitous motor-car, and we must, therefore, restrict ourselves to a glance at the manufacture of its mechanism, and a few short excursions into those developments which promise most to alter our modes of life.
We will begin with a trip over one of the largest motor factories in the world, selecting that of Messrs. Dion and Bouton, whose names are inseparable from the history of the modern motor-car. They may justly claim that to deal with the origin, rise, and progress of the huge business which they have built up would be to give an account, in its general lines, of all the phases through which the motor, especially the petrol motor, has passed from its crudest shape to its present state of comparative perfection.
The Count Albert de Dion was, in his earlier days, little concerned with things mechanical. He turned rather to the fashionable pursuit of duelling, in which he seems to have made a name. But he was not the man to waste his life in such inanities, and when, one day, he was walking down the Paris boulevards, his attention was riveted by a little clockwork carriage exposed for sale among other New Year's gifts. That moment was fraught with great consequences, for an inventive mind had found a proper scope for its energy. Why, thought he, could not real cars be made to run by some better form of motive power? On inquiring he learnt that a workman named Bouton had produced the car. The Count, therefore, sought the artisan; with whom he worked out the problem which had now become his aim in life. Hence it is that the names "Dion—Bouton" are found on thousands of engines all over the world.
The partners scored their first successes with steam- and petrol-driven tricycles, built in a small workshop in the Avenue Malakoff in Paris. The works were then transferred to Puteaux, which has since developed into the great automobile centre of the world, and after two more changes found a resting-place on the Quai National. Here close upon 3,000 hands are engaged in supplying the world's requirements in motors and cars. Let us enter the huge block of buildings and watch them at work.