Railroad Man's Magazine U. S. A. Publication Article (1)

From the Kearney Files
Railroad Man's Magazine August 1918
By Arthur W Grahame.

That railroads have greatly improved in the last fifty years goes without saying; in roadbed, passenger and freight equipment, motive power, signals; in everything but ---
SPEED !
And speed is the thing upon which the modern world most prides itself.
In 1846 ---- seventy two years ago --- a speed of seventy - two miles an hour was attained regularly between Paddington and Didcot, on the Great Western Railway, of England. Eight years later this was increased to eighty - one miles an hour.
Since then there has been no real advance. A maximum of 130 miles an hour was made in the test of a high speed electric line in Germany in 1903, but in practical everyday railroading, rolling the varnished cars over the rails at a mile a minute is still mighty good running.
Why is it that with improvements made in everything else pertaining to railroads wears, in respect to speed, no better off than were the old rails of the days of the link - and - pin coupler?
E. W. Chalmers , the inventor of the Kearney High Speed Railway, thinks that it is because our two - rail system is all wrong. So long as we use it, he says, we cannot advance. In its place --- he offers his system which, although revolutionary, has the endorsement of many eminent engineers.
Mr. Kearney is not an Englishman but he is a Britisher. He was born in Geelong, Australia, thirty - nine years ago. Ever since that time he has been interested in rapid- transit problems. Perhaps the fact that he was born in this same town of Geelong and wanted to get away from it had some bearing on this interest. At any rate, his address is now "London , England".