The electric locomotives built by Mr. Edison were constructed along the usual lines of steam locomotives, with cab, headlight, and cowcatcher, the motive power being applied from the motors to the axle by means of friction pulleys. This method was soon abandoned, as the pulleys slipped a great deal before the locomotive actually started. A system of belts which was substituted proved more satisfactory. The current was conveyed to the motor through the track, and was supplied to the road by underground cables connecting from the dynamo-room of Mr. Edison's laboratory. The rails were insulated from the ties by coatings of Japan varnish, and by placing them on pads made of muslin impregnated with tar.
From the very first this road gave promise of success. The tireless genius of Edison was constantly finding and correcting defects, and there was every prospect that in a few months a practical and economical electric railway would be an accomplished fact. Then came the financial crash of the Northern Pacific Railway, involving the fortune of Mr. Villard, and tying the hands of the inventor at Menlo Park for the time being.
The year following, however, Mr. Field and Mr. Edison combined their forces and formed a company for perfecting and constructing electric locomotives and railways. In the same year an electric railway was put in operation at the Chicago Railway Exposition, the chief promoters of this enterprise being Messrs. Field, F. B. Rae, and C. O. Mailloux. In the gallery of the building a circular track, something like a third of a mile in length, was laid, and on this an electric locomotive named The Judge hauled a single car which carried over twenty-six thousand passengers in the month of June. In the autumn of the same year, The Judge was used for hauling passengers on a track at the Louisville Exposition. It was capable of attaining a speed of twelve miles an hour, and its average speed was eight miles. It was twelve feet long over all, weighed something like three tons, and, like Edison's locomotive, was equipped with cowcatcher, headlight, and cab. The current was taken from a surface, or feed rail, by means of bundles of phosphor-bronze wire, so arranged that a good clean contact would be made on each side of the rail whether the car was moving forward or backward.
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.