Present Roads Not Suited for Fast Running
The ideal of this Australian engineer is an electric rapid - transit system that will make possible speed of one hundred miles an hour or more.
If the high- speed electric line test in Germany did anything, he says, it showed that present - day methods of track construction are unsuitable to speeds greater than eighty miles an hour. When this was exceeded it became necessary to relay the track, using heavier rails packed with larger ballast.
By at one hundred miles an hour this heavier track became unsafe and the use of two guide - rails was resorted to. This brought the weight of the single track up to 460 pounds a yard.
Yet faster railroad transportation is wanted. Some time the airplane may become a passenger - traffic competitor. This old world of ours is a busy place. Every year it will get busier.
"Conservation!" Cry the efficiency fiends. What is more important than the conservation of time.
The tests of the German High Speed line confirmed the opinion that Mr. Kearney has already formed --- that existing railways are not suited to meet this demand for higher speed. It is impossible, he thinks, with the present system of construction, to overcome lateral oscillation --- the unpleasant swaying of a fast - moving train --- which at high speeds is a continual source of danger.
You old hotheads and tallowpots will have to admit that you've felt just a little queer once or twice when the old girl started doing a Salome. Come now, be honest! Another thing. Most railroads have some curves. Some railroads are most all curves. And on curves hogs have been known to climb the iron for a look at the country.
As they say in engineering parlance, there is no absolute safety factor against derailment. Modern expresses run close to the danger -- line in rounding the ends. Drive them faster, says Mr. Kearney, and there will be many accidents.
And the most unpopular thing that can happen on a well - run railroad is an accident to a passenger hitch.
To make any real advance, argued the inventor, it would be necessary to make a fresh start and resort to some new railroad construction. It was with this thought in mind that he set to work. Now he presents to the world an invention that he thinks will solve the problem of safe high - speed lines, and in addition be cheaper to construct and operate than the present systems of rail transportation.
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