From the Kearney Files
The Society of Engineers. Journal and Transactions for 1912
Comments by Mr E. W. Chalmers Kearney to presentation by
Mr Charles Reginald Enock F. R. G. S. Member.
2nd October 1911
The Necessity for Safer, Quicker and Cheaper Railways; with some proposals therefore.
Mr. E. W. Chalmers Kearney wrote :- The subject of Mr. Enock's paper is of peculiar interest time, as I have devoted my life to the problem of High Speed Transit. I did not start out as an inventor with an idea to exploit, but merely with the conviction that something had to be done to improve the present means of transit and with my mind entirely free as to the best means to adopt. For the first four years (1902 -1906) I did nothing but research work, examining during that period every system and the number was very large - that claimed High Speed as a characteristic. I found none that I considered practicable and it was only then that I determined to design a system myself. Armed with the wealth of information on the subject which I had gleaned by research, it did not take long to decide upon the broad features of the system which is now known as the Kearney High Speed Railway. From 1906 to the present time had been devoted to experimental work and to the gradual improvement of the system in detail and I can now fairly claim to be in a position to design and supply a railway capable of maintaining the high velocities forecasted in the paper.
In England however, inventors and promotors of new ideas are looked at askance and every possible difficulty is thrust in their way.
One has to suffer much through misrepresentation and even personal abuse.
On several occasions public demonstrations of my models have been rendered futile by deliberate mutilation - electric wires have been cut, rails removed or bent and once the whole of the supports to one of the stations were sawn through!
Editor's note.
This is only one of a number of occasions that he encountered opposition and deliberate hostility to his system by persons and institutions known and unknown.
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