TUBE, TRAIN, TRAM, AND CAR
OR
UP-TO-DATE LOCOMOTION

TUBE, TRAIN,
TRAM, AND CAR
OR
UP-TO-DATE LOCOMOTION

BY
ARTHUR H. BEAVAN
AUTHOR OF “MARLBOROUGH HOUSE AND ITS OCCUPANTS,” “IMPERIAL LONDON,”
“CROWNING THE KING,” ETC.

WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS

And an Introduction
BY
LLEWELLYN PREECE, M.I.E.E.


colophon


LONDON
GEO. ROUTLEDGE & SONS, LTD.
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.
1903
[All rights reserved.]



“THE CHARIOTS RUN LIKE THE LIGHTNING”

PREFACE

It was predicted by George Stephenson in 1825 that his system would supersede all other methods of conveyance in this country. Similarly can it now be prophesied that throughout the world electrical traction will ultimately supplant all other forms. An age of electricity is dawning, when “power” may be obtained direct from fuel or from the vast store of energy existing in the heated interior of the earth, or even from the atmosphere that surrounds us; when every mountain stream and gleaming waterfall throughout Great Britain, and each tide as it rises and falls, will help to generate the subtle fluid, which, produced on a vast scale abroad, where giant cataracts and mighty rapids abound, may be imported to supplement our home supply, and be utilised in every manufacturing district; when all our main lines will be electric, and “light railways” ubiquitous; when coal-less ships and aerial machines, with perfected accumulators, may possibly traverse sea and ocean, and invade the domain of condor and eagle; when farms will be cultivated by electrical contrivances, and their produce expeditiously conveyed to market, and the sanitation of our streets be ensured by the universal use of horseless vehicles. An age that may witness “current” laid on for domestic purposes to every house in the land as a matter of course; and also as machine-power to village settlements, where artisans engaged in certain kinds of trade may work amidst the pleasant surroundings of home. And thus the abstract principle, “Back to the land,” may become an accomplished fact.

To bring the body of this work precisely up to the date of its publication being obviously impossible, I take the opportunity of making passing reference to the railway disaster on the Métropolitain of Paris, when eighty-four passengers were killed, and which has caused the public mind to be much disturbed by the possibility of danger in the London Tubes.

As regards trams, the London United Tramways Company established a record of traffic during the August Bank Holiday period, the total for the four days being 878,000, that on Monday alone being 330,000 travellers. A serious electric tram accident occurred at Ramsgate in August, when nineteen persons were injured by the colliding of one car with another at a point where the lines converged.

Then, as to motor-cars. The great Gordon-Bennett race in Ireland this summer was won by a German. A tentative Act of Parliament for regulating the traffic, to come into force January 1st next, and to continue for three years, has received the Royal Assent, the speed limit being fixed at twenty miles per hour.

A service of motor hansom cabs is shortly to be established in London. The Fischer “combination” omnibus has successfully passed through repeated private trials, and will probably be adopted by one or both of the metropolitan chief companies.

Motor bath-chairs, to hold two people, and propelled by electricity, will be accomplished facts at the World’s Fair, St. Louis, next year.

I have now to acknowledge, with thanks, the assistance of Sir William H. Preece, who kindly read through the proof-sheets of this volume just before he fell seriously ill in August, and of his son, Mr. Llewellyn Preece, who has written the Introduction, and I now leave “Tube, Train, Tram, and Car” to receive the verdict of those who travel.

ARTHUR H. BEAVAN

September, 1903.

INTRODUCTION

BY LLEWELLYN PREECE, M.I.E.E.

The advances which, within the last few years, have been made in the application of electricity for the purpose of transportation are shown very clearly in this book, and if the author has made one or two flights on the wings of fancy regarding the future which may be somewhat startling to the reader, it must be remembered that if many things which are of everyday occurrence had been suggested to any of us fifty years ago, and if we had been told that it would be possible to travel at the rate of a hundred miles an hour, we should have been somewhat inclined to laugh. As the reader will learn, such travelling is to be very shortly a fact.

At the same time I do not believe that it will be so much with the high-speed work as with the tramway and light railway work that electricity will be of the greatest service to the public in the future.

I look forward to the time when there will be a network of light railways surrounding every town in the kingdom, enabling the population to spread itself out once again in the country.

Central power stations distributing electric current over a radius of fifteen or twenty miles will enable these railways to work at very low cost, and therefore carry passengers considerable distances at low fares.

The tendency at the present time being to reduce the hours of labour, whether mental or manual, the time at the disposal of a workman for travelling will increase, so that with an eight hours working day and cheap electric light railways, there will be no reason why the poorest labourer should not live in the country, and at least sleep in a pure atmosphere.

The adaptability of electricity to motor-car work has hardly yet been sufficiently realised. People see the luxurious electric brougham, described in this book, running on the streets of London and other large cities, but few have any idea that not only the wealthy aristocrat, but everyone will, before long, be able to ride in such carriages, possibly not so luxuriousy fitted up, but equally comfortable and speedy.

The usual cry at present is that electric cars are very nice, but the owners have great difficulties with the batteries. Undoubtedly batteries have given trouble in the past, and still do so to some extent. But if a man buys a horse and gives it in charge of the gardener’s boy, he is likely to have trouble with his horse. In the same way, if a man buys an electric carriage and expects his coachman to look after it, he only naturally does have considerable trouble. There are several companies prepared to look after and maintain in continuous use, not only the batteries, but the complete carriages, and this is greatly improving the reliability of the electric car, and allaying the fears of those anxious to have such carriages.

Besides this, the battery itself is making great strides forward: its capacity per cwt. has largely increased, its life is much longer, and its reliability under great variations of discharge has considerably improved. In fact, it may be safely said that even now the electric car is more reliable than either the petrol or the steam car. At present it will not do the same distance on one charge, nor will it do the great speed other cars will, but this is the great reason why it should appeal to the British public. The craze for high speeds does not affect the majority of people. I believe that it is only a question of a few years for the petrol and steam cars to be placed in museums and shown as monstrosities of the past, like the mammoth elephant, and that every cab, omnibus, and private carriage throughout the country will use electricity as the motive power.

In fact I do not think it unwarrantable to assert that, so far as this country is concerned, many of us will see the day when the only form of energy used for transportation will be that known as electricity.

LLEWELLYN PREECE

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Tube, Train, Tram, and Car

CHAPTER I

THE OLD AND THE NEW ORDER OF RAILWAY LOCOMOTION

Thus it came to pass that in the period 1825 to 1835, when the main roads of Great Britain were at their best, when the then mode of travelling, though on a limited scale, had, as regards speed, punctuality, and organisation, reached the highest possible pitch of perfection, a little cloud like a man’s hand, presaging the new order of locomotion, arose at the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, and overshadowed the old method. So effective was the competition of the “iron horse,” that in lieu of the fifty-four splendidly equipped vehicles which in 1835 carried His Majesty’s mails throughout England, not a single coach left the General Post Office, St. Martin’s-le-Grand, in the year 1844; while the kings highways had become almost deserted.

Though this was barely sixty years ago, railways have evolved themselves out of their embryonic state into a condition approaching the fateful one of perfect development.

In early days, first-class passengers were boxed up in replicas of old stage-coaches, the second-class in open carriages exposed to the weather, and the third-class huddled together in seatless cattle-trucks. Contrast this with our luxurious Pullmans, and our corridor and vestibule trains for all classes, warmed throughout, lighted by electricity, and provided with lavatories, dining-saloons, buffets, and sleeping-cars. “With what further improvements can we allure the public?” ask anxious directors. One answer only is possible. “By bringing the mode of locomotion up to date.”

This means, in the case of old-established railway companies, a complete and costly transformation, or an independent mono-rail track for long distances; under any circumstances entailing much hardship upon the share-holders. For at the moment when railway-engineers—improving so vastly upon George Stephenson’s venerable engine,[1] built in 1822, and still at work for the Hutton Colliery, its weight only fifteen tons, its speed ten miles an hour—have constructed such magnificent locomotives as the “Greater Britain” for the London and North

Western Railway, or the ten-wheeled giant[2] for the Great Northern Railway, fifty-seven feet over all, weighing 100 tons, and capable of reeling off its 65 miles an hour with ease, electricity steps into the field, displaces the stately engine—resplendent in red, blue, green, or chocolate paint, glossy as the coat of some highly trained racehorse, and gleaming with polished brass and steel, finished in all its parts with exquisite accuracy, the very embodiment of energy under perfect control—and from some unpretentious-looking building afar off, drives our trains with unseen but resistless force, at the rate, if desired, of a hundred miles an hour!

The construction of an ordinary steam locomotive is an intricate operation, necessitating machine-shops, erecting-shops, foundries, forges, etc., covering acres of ground, as at Crewe, Doncaster, Derby, or Swindon. Not a hundred engines are exactly alike in pattern, and each one is supposed to be composed of over five thousand different parts, all of which have to be stowed away in a necessarily limited space.

“How is steam utilised by the locomotive?” is a question asked again and again (and not by children only) ever since Stephenson’s engine started on its triumphant progress from Stockton to Darlington and back, and which, I venture to affirm, only a small percentage of travellers, even in 1903, can answer “right away,” as our American cousins would express it.

Briefly, then, as follows: Raised up on high is the mighty boiler. Remove its plates, and running through its entire length will be seen a cluster of some two or three hundred brass tubes, in diameter that of a penny-piece. At the rear of the boiler, on a lower level, is the fuel fire-box, with its grate and ash-pan, while in front is the smoke-box, surmounted by the familiar chimney or funnel, called in the United States the “smoke-stack,” in British engines reduced to a minimum of height. Water from the tender surrounds the brass tubes, and when the fire is burning, flames, smoke, and heated gases rush through them, escaping viâ the chimney, but in their passage converting the boiling water into expanding steam, which, when the regulator is opened, is directed by valves into the hollow cylinders—sometimes placed below the boiler, but generally visible outside—forcing by its pressure the pistons backwards and forwards alternately, and, by means of intermediate machinery, transferring its energy to the driving-wheels.

The exhausted steam, after accomplishing its work, joins the smoke in the smoke-box, escaping up the funnel by jerks, which creates a forced draught through the brass boiler-tubes, and hastens the generation of steam.

ELECTRICITY—THE NEW ORDER

Contrast this with electricity, the definition of whose exact nature is a task I must of necessity leave to others, but its adaptation to the purposes of traction can be thus broadly explained:—

Dynamos or generators are situated at some fixed station, more or less distant, generating electrical energy, whence the current is transmitted along a central steel rail, or, in the case of some tramways, viâ overhead wires, returning to its place of birth by another rail or cable, and completing its circuit. It is “picked up” by a small locomotive fitted with motors that work the driving-mechanism, and thus propels the coaches or cars behind it at varying speeds.

The rotation of the dynamos is effected either by a torrent, waterfall, or swift-flowing river, absorbed by turbines, or by steam supplied from ordinary boilers.

In other words, we convert our water and coal into steam, and, indirectly, the heat in the steam into electrical energy; and the heavy locomotive that used to carry its own fuel, and manufacture its steam as it tore along with the train behind it, now leaves tender and boiler at home, and has its driving power, in the form of electric current, forwarded to it per centre rail, to be drawn upon when wanted.

The system is beautifully simple, and the machinery compact and uncomplicated. Smoke defilement is unknown, and the trains are comparatively noiseless. In short, electric traction is the refinement of mechanically applied power.

Now let us visit an electrical power station—a small one—and I have in my mind that of the Waterloo and City Electric Railway.

Hidden away behind a bewildering labyrinth of railway arches, in a cul-de-sac, approached from a back street, not a hundred miles from a great railway station, is a plain, very plain brick building, wherein, for aught one knows to the contrary, such prosaic articles as pots and pans, or cardboard boxes, may be in course of manufacture. Pass through a door, always on the swing, and an unpretending office is reached, furnished in the usual manner, and occupied by clerks engaged upon the ordinary duties of their vocation.

Access to the engineer-in-chief being granted, he courteously conducts us to the power room, whence issues the energy that drives the trains.

Imagination had pictured a great hall, filled with ponderous machinery whose component parts are cranks, steel rods, shafts, and toothed wheels, a wilderness of metal, moving with bewildering rapidity and thunderous power, in an atmosphere redolent of lubricating oil, a vision of whirling wheels, an Ezekiel vision of wheels in the midst of wheels, instinct with life, such as the prophet saw 600 years B.C., by the River Chebar, in the land of the Chaldean.