ELECTRICAL RAILWAYS.
FOR several reasons, the opening of the new Electrical Railway at Liverpool on Saturday by Lord Salisbury attracted more attention than any event of the week outside the walls of Parliament. The national bias in favour of mechanical skill was gratified by the acknowledgment that a late Prime Minister, whom no one ever accused of treating politics as a pastime, had yet found time to treat electrical science so seriously as to qualify him as the accredited intro- ducer of a great invention. The enterprise itself is, if not new, a novelty in England on the scale in which it is now presented. The question of locomotion in great towns is daily becoming more vital to the working men, who grudge the drain on their time and pockets made by even the least expensive and quickest systems now in use ; and, lastly, there is a wide-spread feeling, to which Lord Salisbury gave ex- pression, that England is behind the times in its development of the powers of electricity.
No such misgivings need apply to the case of the new railway at Liverpool. In size and power, as well as in the ingenuity of its details, it surpasses the best American models. It extends along the quays of the great line of docks on the Mersey for nearly seven miles. Its carriages are of full size, not arranged like a tram-car, but like the ordinary passenger- car of the United States, each being in two compartments, and capable of seating fifty-seven persons. Beneath each car is an electric motor of from one hundred to seventy horse- power, and the speed will be as high as thirty miles an hour. The power to work the trains, and with them the accessories of signals and light, is the same, and generated from a single point on the system. The whole runs upon an "overhead railroad," or continuous bridge of iron. That is not, however, of the essence of an electric railway, though the lightness of electric rolling-gear makes such an arrangement cheap and suitable for the purpose.
If its progress abroad is a probable measure of its future. in England, the electric railway in Liverpool is but the pioneer of a multitude of similar undertakings in our great towns.. In 1884, according to Mr. Preece, there was but one electrical railway in America. In 1893, one Company alone has 4,628: miles at work, and in some cases, speeds of 40 miles an hour are obtained. In the whole of the United States there were,. in 1892, £12,000,000 invested in electric railways, 250,000,000 passengers were carried, and the cost of working averaged 6d.. per mile. Mr. Preece does not probably include in this estimate the electrical tramways of the United States, where more than 400 Companies are using the overhead trolley system for street lines alone. In England, though the Liverpool railway is the most complete, it is not the first enterprise of the kind. At Brighton a small electrical railway has been running for some time. Ryde owns another miniature line; a third runs in connection with the Portrush and Giant's Causeway Railway. The most recent experiment of the kind is the City and South London Railroad, running for a distance of six miles from King William Street to. Clapham. The difficulties overcome in making this line could hardly be surpassed among the problems set for the construction of a railroad in a populous city, and the method. chosen was the exact opposite of that adopted in Liverpool. There the cars are carried on a viaduct above the streets. In London, it was decided to burrow far below the foundations. of all buildings. Shafts were sunk to a depth of sixty feet below the surface, and a tunnel was run between each, thus avoiding the " cut-and-cover" system which put the District and Metropolitan Railways to such enormous expense for com- pensation to existing house-property. The absence of smoke, heat, and foul air in the electrical system, alone rendered such deep and continuous tunnelling possible ; but financial success does not always follow a mechanical victory. The fourth half-yearly report of the City and South London Railway, how- ever, will probably remove the last doubts on this, the most important question, bearing on the new invention. In the first half-year, the cost which would fall under the head of ordinary locomotive expenses in a steam railway, was Od. per mile,. equalling that of the most economically managed trunk lines of the Kingdom. But in the three succeeding half-years it has fallen to 7.9d., 7.7d., and now to 7.1d. But from this, in order to make a fair comparison between the little London rail-. way and the great lines, must be taken the difference between the cost of coal at the pit's mouth, and the expenses for its de- livery in London, which would reduce the locomotive expenses to 6d. per mile, an average which exactly coincides with that on the American electrical railways. The evidence given by the report on a still smaller undertaking of the kind, the Portrush Electrical Railroad, is even more favourable. The coat of running the steam locomotives on the line during the past year was 18. per mile, while on the portion worked by elec- trical motors it was 5d. per mile, and last year as low as 4c1.. The estimate for the Liverpool line is set far lower ; and if, as is anticipated, the consumption of coal does not rise beyond 7 lb. for every mile run, the impetus given to the construction of electrical railways for passenger traffic will be enormously increased. But the claims made for the economy of electrical as against steam locomotion, far exceed the proportion of two- to one, as indicated by present experience of cost. It is main- tained that while the steam locomotive cannot develop more than 50 per cent. of the power which would be given by the theoretically perfect steam-engine, the electrical locomotive can develop something approaching 70 per cent, of the power sup- plied. The difference is largely due to the fact that, while the first carries its own coal and water, and consumes it in transit, the latter is supplied from central stations, where the utmost economy can be practised in the production of power. On the other hand, there is at present some leakage of force in the electrical system as the distance from the central station increases. Electricity, like other easily made gains, is difficult to keep ; and "electrical confusion," due to its roaming ten- dencies, is already puzzling the engineers and giving work for the Law Courts, in large towns Thus, in Leeds, the lines of the electric tramway and the telephone have established em- barrassing relations which were never contemplated by the shareholders. Time and patience will no doubt overcome these difficulties, and increase the future value of the electric railway. At present, the limits to its usefulness are mainly due to the short distances at which the supply of power from
the fixed stations is available. That need be no drawback to its use in towns of ordinary size. But it is hardly probable that, in the case of London, with branch-lines running from Ealing, Willesden, Wimbledon, Richmond, and other distant suburbs, electricity is at present likely to supersede steam on the District or Metropolitan Railways. The two electrical lines now contemplated are short, and confined to the West of London, one being designed to run from Shepherd's Bush to the City, and the other across Hyde Park to Paddington. But if the suburban lines could be made to centre at some common point, such as Earl's Court in the West, meeting a City traffic conducted solely by electricity, the gain in comfort and con- venience to the travelling London public could hardly be • overrated. Instead of hundreds of steam locomotives, exhaling gases which do not support life, and are so far injurious to life, and adding to the din which is an almost greater agent in London wear-and-tear than foul air itself, the traffic would be inodorous and inaudible. The ease of stoppage, and light- ness of the trains, are both guarantees of safety either in pre- venting or mitigating accidents ; and with greater safety secured, the number of trains run would be increased. With such advantages in its favour, it cannot be long before the electrical motor supersedes the steam-engine for urban traffic ; and the success of the Liverpool railroad will in every sense be London's gain.
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