CHAPTER IV

_REMARKABLE ELECTRIC RAILWAYS_

“Behold they shall come with speed swiftly.”--ISAIAH v. 26.

MONO-RAILWAYS

A one-rail railway! What kind of novelty can that be, emanating no doubt from the prolific brain of some enthusiastic engineer possessed with an idea, a fad, a craze--call it what you will! We are accustomed to highly respectable trains running in an orthodox manner on double rails. A projected, many-railed track we have also heard of to carry ships bodily across the Isthmus of Panama. But the idea of a single-rail “Flying Dutchman” or “Wild Irishman” seems chimerical.

It is not so, however, and the system has been solemnly and deliberately sanctioned by Act of Parliament.

Nowadays one need not be astonished at anything. Take cycling, for instance. Long ago, when velocipedes--three or four-wheeled, uncanny machines--were mere toys wherewith youths loved to dislocate their joints on the lower terraces of the Crystal Palace, no one dreamt that bicycles, outraging all the laws of gravitation and practically mono-wheeled, would ere long be used on road and field and moor, on mountain-side, on steppe and desert, over barren Asiatic tundras and snow-clad Yukon plains--in short, wherever adventurous mankind has penetrated.

The mono-rail train, like a bicycle, runs on one linear track, but, unlike that hopelessly collapsible machine, requires no balancing, and cannot capsize, and under proper conditions is the safest known method of travelling at very great speed.

“_Faire prose sans le savoir_” is a familiar aphorism of Molière, but perhaps it would astonish most of us to be calmly told by modern engineers that all our lives we have, _without knowing it_, been travelling on mono-railways! They assert that although it is true that the ordinary engine with its coaches rests on a _pair_ of rails, the fact that the space between the rails is cut away is immaterial, as it is rendered a single track by the rigidity of the carriage axles, and if these were loose, of course the train would overturn.

Nature has no example of mono-railwayism (to coin an expression), unless it be the gossamer or shooting spider, that upon a single invisible thread spun from its body ascends to aerial heights on a kind of self-manufactured mono-rail, Dame Nature being too lavish and too wise, in the perfect freedom she accords to birds, beasts, fishes, and insects, to restrict their movements to one undeviating path.

In the moral world there have always been mono-railists, men of one fixed idea, from which they could not, or would not, budge--apostles of an ambition, a creed, a theory, a political conviction. The world has had its Alexander the Great, its Napoleon, Buddha, St. Paul, Mahomet, Martin Luther, Ignatius Loyola, Wycliffe, its Palissy, George Stephenson, Mungo Park, John Bright, and Cobden.

It has been left to the inventive mechanical genius of the nineteenth century to develop the mono-rail system. Doubtless those inscrutable people, the Chinese, knew of it, and applied it in some way long ago; and perhaps the yet more mysterious dwellers in ancient Egypt--whence all wisdom seems to have descended--utilised it after some unknown fashion.

Blondin, in his marvellous feat of trundling a wheel-barrow containing a man along the high-level rope, used a hempen mono-rail; and the wire cables stretching across the Thames at the reconstructed bridges at Kew and Vauxhall, acting as travelling ways to convey the excavated soil from the coffer-dams in large iron “skips” or buckets, were another species of mono-rail; while at home in brickfields, and in mines, and on plantations in distant lands, miniature railways have been used for years to carry clay, ore, and produce, over plain and hill and dale.

In India a peculiar kind of tramway truck has been in use for some time, with two or three flanged wheels which run on a single rail, and a large balance-wheel on one side of the truck to prevent it toppling over. Produce of all kinds can easily be drawn upon it by a couple of coolies, and its efficiency on country roads has been highly spoken of.

Germany presents us with a recent and curious example of the application of the principle to locomotion. In the Wupper Valley near Dusseldorf and Cologne there are two towns, Barmen and Elberfeld, about eight miles apart, mutually engaged in chemical and textile industries, and this separation of the sister-towns was an obvious disadvantage to both. But now they are joined by a wonderful railway, constructed on an elevated line running six miles of its course above the River Wupper, a tributary of the Rhine, some sixty to a hundred feet wide. The carriages are suspended, and work upon a single rail, a development of the travelling cable-way system. This rail is rigidly fastened to an iron framework of girders, and supports the cars hanging therefrom by means of two steel “bogies” with two wheels. Thus they can pass round sharp curves without slackening speed and with the greatest safety, its motive power, electricity, being applied by two motors on each carriage which drive both wheels with equal force at a speed fixed at thirty-one miles an hour, and attainable fifteen seconds after starting.

As elevated railways of this type are somewhat costly, and a simpler and cheaper form would be a desideratum, a short line across country was built as an experiment at Cologne-Deutz. The stays, measuring from 9·6 feet to 28·5 feet, were made either of wood, or of iron tubes, and met at the top in a cap, from which was jointed the sheet-iron supports that carried the mono-rail. By means of this jointed connection, the strain was always of a central character, and, therefore, more easily borne. At intervals of about 660 feet a couple of stays were firmly braced together, in order to give stability to the overhead structure and to take up the longitudinal thrust. In consequence, even with light locomotives, the traction power was very high, and on the line at Deutz it was found that a locomotive drawing two carriages full of passengers could ascend a gradient of 1 in 6 with perfect safety.

But a means of adapting a mono-rail to every condition had some time before been thought out. In 1883-4 Charles Lartigue, the eminent French engineer, developing the principle conceived by the great Telford, constructed some small lines in Tunis and Algeria for carrying esparto grass. The cars were drawn by animals in a special form of mono-rail, the model upon which Mr. F. B. Behr, ASS. INST. C.E.--who modestly disclaims all originality in the matter--has worked for years, greatly improving in practical details the original design, and constructing for the first time mono-rail trains that have been successful in the carriage of both goods and passengers by steam and electricity.

The Lartigue single-rail system, as perfected by Mr. Behr, is as follows, but of necessity my description is a mere outline.

Dismissing all preconceived ideas of rails laid down upon the ground, we must imagine a heavy double-headed steel rail firmly bolted on to the summit of a girder supported by trestles, the whole rigidly framed upon massive sleepers. We thus have a permanent way somewhat resembling a continuous A-shaped metal viaduct, raised about five feet from the surface, or a succession of iron barriers--such as road-menders make use of to divert the traffic--set ends on, secured to each other and to the ground. Now take an ordinary railway car with seats arranged as in an omnibus, but with two additional rows back to back in the centre. Remove the axles and wheels, extending the sides and ends of the car almost down to the ground level, thus providing beneath the flooring an enclosure with ample room for the locomotive machinery. All along the bottom of this enclosure is an opening or space, about five feet high--extending between the middle rows of seats--that fits the A-shaped viaduct, so that the car is suspended, or, as it were, sits upon the mono-rail, whereon roll six vertical grooved wheels that, when set in motion by the electric current, propel the cars. Thus we have a train apparently without wheels, these together with the apparatus being completely hidden away between and beneath the passengers’ seats. On each side of the A-shaped trestle are fixed two guide-rails fitting close into horizontal grooved wheels effectually checking all oscillation. In front is the bogie locomotive motor with a pointed bow, the stern of the car also being pointed, so that the entire arrangement resembles when seen from above a great stickless rocket with a sharp and flexible snout.

As the sister isle was the first to adopt electricity to a railway (_vide_ Chapter II.), so was she the pioneer of mono-railism. In County Kerry, Munster, near the Shannon’s mouth, stands the little town of Listowel, and 9½ miles distant is Ballybunion. To connect these a mono-railway for passenger and goods traffic was opened on March 1st, 1888, and has worked ever since without any difficulty. The trains are drawn by a steam locomotive divided in two, one on each side of the mono-rail--a kind of twin-screw arrangement--and with their smoke-stacks and giant lantern between them, present a strange and rather comical appearance, while the track meandering at its own sweet will across country without fencing of any kind, adds to the novelty of the little line.

Its great safety has been amply demonstrated by the only mishap that has occurred to it. Some miscreant had deliberately removed the fastenings from over thirty yards of the line at a critical point where a reverse curve began, and close to a bridge. At full speed, a train carrying 200 passengers came up to the loosened rail, which gave way, breaking the coupling chains and, luckily, bringing into action the automatic Westinghouse brake. The permanent way was ruined by the shock, but the fall absorbed the force of the reaction, and deposited the carriages quietly on the ground without injury to anyone, and without even breaking a window. On an ordinary line the train would have been thrown off the metals into the river with terrible consequences. Shortly after the line was opened, the Lartigue system was adopted in France, from Tours to Pannissieres in the Loire Department.

The Ballybunion and Listowel Railway is the indirect father of a modified form of mono-rail which is expected to appear this year at the Crystal Palace. It is called the Electric Mid-Railway, the invention of Mr. W. R. Smith, and as the line is to connect the existing railway station with various points in the grounds, it should be well patronised at the modest penny fare which is to be charged. Being an entire novelty, it has a specially good chance of success in this particular situation. The single rail is placed below the carriage, the weight of which is balanced upon it after the fashion of a bicycle. On each side of this single track runs a trestle carrying a rail on a level with the centre of gravity of each carriage. This rail serves the necessary purpose of supporting the carriage and of also preventing derailing.

A similar device had been suggested--and possibly has been carried into effect on the New York and Washington D. C. Line--when it was proposed to elevate a track above the earth on a single line of upright beams, the trains to be kept steady by an auxiliary rail on either side, but which would only come into play on rounding curves.

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.

There remains only one question--_Cui bono?_ What useful purpose can be served by being able to get from Liverpool to Manchester in twenty minutes instead of over an hour? On an emergency, such as a sudden necessity for the services of a medical specialist, a matter of life or death perhaps, or on the occasion of any crisis in domestic or mercantile life when the instant presence of some one distant individual is imperative, it might be of immense service. But in the usual course of business, do not existing railways bring merchant and broker, importer and manufacturer, face to face quickly enough, and are not telephones and telegraphs and the post sufficient to carry through big transactions between the centre of the cotton trade and the great city on the banks of the Mersey? Public opinion, which demands increasing speed in every phase of life, especially in travelling, declares they are not sufficient; for we live in an impatient age when every hour of detention on a transatlantic passage is begrudged.

Therefore it is not to be wondered at that in 1900-1, after the most exhaustive inquiries and criticisms, the royal assent was given August 17th, 1901, to the Manchester and Liverpool Electric Express Railway, which was duly authorised by Act of Parliament. It must be premised that the line, like our London Tube, does not provide for goods traffic; that the time occupied by the journey being so short, neither luggage-van, lavatory, or refreshment buffet is required, and that all trains consist of a single car, couplings being a source of danger at so great a rate of speed. But as the trains run every ten minutes, and carry about forty persons each time, a large passenger traffic is provided for.

Well--a broker has been telephoned for by his client, a wealthy cotton-spinner in Manchester, anxious to consult with him personally; so he at once leaves the flags of the Exchange, and after an eight minutes’ walk arrives at the Express Railway Station, near the entrance gate of the Blue Coat Hospital in School Lane. He considers that in getting into and out of the lift he has lost two minutes, but he just catches his car and starts for a run of 34½ miles to Manchester, and since it is his first experience of lightning travelling, he notices everything connected with the new line. There are many curves, he finds, all necessary in order to avoid conflict with the vested interests of other railway companies; the gradients, he observes, at points about three-quarters of a mile from the Liverpool and Manchester stations, are steep--1 in 25, and 1 in 30--but of service in accelerating and breaking the trains.

Unlike the Listowel mono-rail line, the Manchester and Liverpool express is fenced from end to end with an unclimbable barrier, and as there are no level-crossings and no means of access, there is no possibility of trespassing. Also, for the security of the workmen employed in maintaining the track as on an ordinary railway--the system of “packing” the sleepers and inspecting the various parts being common to all railways--a clear space of three feet is left between the passing trains, and strong posts, ten feet apart, are fixed along the centre of the space for the labourers to hold on by when an express rushes by. Collisions, our broker quickly perceives, are impossible, there being no switches, and notwithstanding the multitude of passengers (some twenty thousand per day) there are never more than two cars on the line at a time, and there are no stoppages between the two termini.

For signalling purposes, the line is divided into four sections of about five miles each, and as the train passes by, its electric motor automatically operates the signal and immediately “blocks” the section behind it, so that the train following cannot advance until its leader has cleared the five-mile division.

The driver and conductor are both together in the front part of the train, so that the conductor has ample time to look out for the signals, to apply the brakes, and assist his mate. The brakes are of the Westinghouse pattern, and the two combined can stop the cars in about 800 yards, even at the speed of 110 miles an hour. These can be aided by Mr. Behr’s ingenious device, which Sir William H. Preece considers quite practicable, viz. louvres or shutters, which, when opened, materially increase the air resistance.

Past Toxteth Park, Garston, Halewood, Widnes (whose only rival in sheer ugliness is perhaps London’s Stratford-by-Bow), and exactly half-way, Warrington, conspicuous for the inkiness of its river Mersey, and noted for its glass, wire, and chemical industries; famed for its network of waterways, especially for the great but evil-smelling ship-canal; noted in history--when but a hamlet, with a clear trout-yielding stream--as the camping-ground of the young Pretender when on his march to Derby in 1745; and associated with Mrs. Gaskell (whose “Cranford” is identified with Knutsford, a neighbouring village), the two Bishops Claughton, Viscount Cross, Luke Fildes, R.A., and “Warrington” Wood, the sculptor.

Close by, in the parish of Great Sankey, is the power-generating station of the railway, the current obtained being 15,000 volts on the triphase alternating system, converted in five sub-stations placed along the line, into a continuous 650 volt current. Every car has four traction motors arranged in pairs, each with a full-speed capacity of 160 h.p., equal to 110 miles an hour. The cars are comfortably upholstered; the seats are separated and placed back to back in the middle, those along the sides facing inwards, as in the Twopenny Tube. The lighting is, of course, excellent, and the ventilation perfect, though to prevent accident the windows are fixed, and the doors, while the train is in motion, are automatically locked.

As regards the cost of this novel undertaking, our Liverpool friend had beforehand ascertained that the capital had been fixed at £2,800,000, and that an average of eight persons per train would more than cover the expense of the enterprise.

Swiftly leaving Warrington in the distance, the express shoots onwards--past Eccles, Pendleton, and Salford--and reaches the terminus at the west side of Deansgate, in the busiest part of Cottonopolis, where, again using the lift, our honest broker speeds to the Exchange in another eight minutes, and in forty-five minutes after leaving Liverpool is in deep business conference with his principal at Manchester.

Contrast this with the existing facilities of the old system for rapid transit between the two places; and those who know their Manchester and Liverpool well, will at once be able to decide whether or not the electric express better meets the requirements of those to whom every minute is of consequence.

The London and North Western Railway (which has a perfectly straight bit of track to Manchester, unequalled, except on the Great Eastern between Littleford and Lynn--21 miles--and on the South Eastern between Nutfield and Ashford--32 miles) runs expresses without stopping from Lime Street and Edge Hill to the Exchange Station, Manchester, doing the journey in forty minutes.

The Great Central Railway, by an indirect route, _viâ_ Garston and Widnes, runs expresses from their Liverpool station (St. James’s) direct to the Manchester Central, in from forty to forty-five minutes; but on neither line is there such a thing as a ten minutes’ service, the intervals between the direct expresses ranging from forty-five minutes to so much as four hours.

Plans, it is said, have been submitted to the Board of Trade for a mono-railway between Edinburgh and Glasgow. The proposed construction is similar to that of the Behr mono-railway between Liverpool and Manchester. It is quite unlike the canny Scot to rush into sensational experiments for a speed of 117 miles per hour, especially as a few years’ waiting for the completion of the Liverpool line would prove or disprove the possibility of the scheme.