HIGH-SPEED ELECTRIC RAILWAYS
In Belgium, Mr. Behr, who throughout his labours there received the personal encouragement and patronage of King Leopold II., successfully built an experimental high-speed mono-rail line at Tervueren in the neighbourhood of Brussels, as an annexe to the Exhibition of 1897. To find suitable ground was the great difficulty. The line had to cross ten public roads, and in the absence of compulsory powers, leases for the land had to be arranged with grasping occupiers and owners. The soil was bad, big cuttings and embankment were unavoidable, and finally the line consisted of nothing but steep, up-and-down gradients. In fact, all the conditions were most unfavourable, notwithstanding which, the result of the experiment was conclusive in showing that with the mono-rail and perfected electrical traction, very high speed, double that of existing passenger express trains, could be attained with absolute safety, a principle which Mr. Behr had for a long time past been particularly impressed with, but which he maintains is not possible on the ordinary two-rail track, even with electricity as a motive power.
In November, 1901, Mr. Behr went to Berlin, and investigated the experiments carried out during forty days by a number of engineering experts on a military track laid down between the German capital and Zossen. It was hoped that a speed of 160 miles an hour would be attained and maintained, and, as a matter of fact, starting from a low speed, the train gradually reached that of 87 miles; then, for a moment only, 95 miles; and for an instant of time, 100 miles per hour; but it was at once discernible that the ordinary two-rail permanent way, though straight, could not bear the terrific strain imposed upon it; the rails bent at many places, while the hundred-miles-an-hour rate had so destructive an effect as to render impracticable any attempt to create a higher record. The air resistance was found to be considerable. With a square-fronted instead of a pointed coach, it was appreciable, and the suction behind the train resembled the pressure of the water at the stern of a mail steamer, and was calculated to equal two-thirds of the “bow” resistance. These experiments went to prove that for excessive velocity an ordinary railway was absolutely unsafe.
A year before this, a steam locomotive train had been tried in America by the Baltimore and Ohio Railway Company, on the Adams principle of reducing the atmospheric resistance to a minimum. It consisted of six cars, a tender, and an engine of fifty-seven tons. The entire train was sheathed down to within eight inches of the track. There were no projections, and all the windows were flush; the cars were coupled close together, and the rear one was run off to a point, the train resembling one long sinuous and flexible carriage.
With this comparatively light engine it is said that the forty miles between Baltimore and Washington were covered in thirty-seven and a half minutes. But it was claimed that with a more powerful locomotive the train could have been easily run at the rate of one mile in thirty-five seconds, or nearly two miles a minute.
These speeds appear tremendous, but custom would soon reconcile us to them. Our forefathers thought fifteen miles an hour terrific; and one of the objections to Stephenson’s ideas was, that at such a speed, not to mention a twenty-or twenty-five-mile rate, no human being could draw breath.
Since then we have quietly acquiesced in and equally welcomed a style of travelling varying from 35 to an average of 58 miles an hour, and even consider it no great feat to run a special viceregal train from Euston to Holyhead—263½ miles—in five hours without stopping, and are not astonished to read of last year’s record run of the mail express from Boulogne to Paris—168 miles—at an average speed of 68 miles an hour!
Still, 120 miles every sixty minutes without stopping is a large order, and in practice would give some remarkable results. For instance, a resident at Putney could be whisked from the station nearest to him, and thence to a point adjoining his office—say in Seething Lane, some seven miles off—in less than five minutes. Brighton could be reached from town in twenty-five minutes; Dover, in forty; Edinburgh, in three hours twenty minutes. Inverness—663 miles away—could be arrived at from Euston in six hours twenty minutes, instead of the fifteen hours thirty-five minutes of the ordinary express; and Paris—allowing one hour thirty minutes for the Channel passage—in three hours forty-two minutes.
THE MANCHESTER AND LIVERPOOL ELECTRIC EXPRESS RAILWAY
Now, the contention of the advocates of the monorail principle is, that only by that system can very high speed be safely attained; and when one comes to closely examine the cars in which this hundred-and-ten-miles-per-hour travelling is achieved, confidence is at once inspired, because of their low centre of gravity and consequent unlikeliness of derailment.