The Romance of Modern Invention: Containing Interesting Descriptions in Non-technical Language of Wireless Telegraphy, Liquid Air, Modern Artillery, Submarines, Dirigible Torpedoes, Solar Motors, Airships, &c. &c.Williams, Archibald
Science
The Romance of Modern Invention: Containing Interesting Descriptions in Non-technical Language of Wireless Telegraphy, Liquid Air, Modern Artillery, Submarines, Dirigible Torpedoes, Solar Motors, Airships, &c. &c.
Williams, Archibald
Inventions
Mr. Behr was encouraged to construct a monorail in Kerry, between
Listowel, a country town famous for its butter, and Ballybunion, a
seaside resort of increasing popularity. The line, opened on the 28th
of February 1888, has worked most satisfactorily ever since, without
injury to a single employé or passenger.
On each side of the trestles, two feet below the apex, run two
guide-rails, against which press small wheels attached to the
carriages to prevent undue oscillation and “tipping” round curves. At
the three stations there are, instead of points, turn-tables or
switches on to which the train runs for transference to sidings.
Road traffic crosses the rail on drawbridges, which are very easily
worked, and which automatically set signals against the train. The
bridges are in two portions and act on the principle of the Tower
Bridge, each half falling from a perpendicular position towards the
centre, where the ends rest on the rail, specially strengthened at
that spot to carry the extra weight. The locomotive is a twin affair;
has two boilers, two funnels, two fireboxes; can draw 240 tons on the
level at fifteen miles an hour, and when running light travels a mile
in two minutes. The carriages, 18 feet long and carrying twelve
passengers on each side, are divided longitudinally into two parts.
Trucks too are used, mainly for the transport of sand--of which each
carries three tons--from Ballybunion to Listowel: and in the centre of
each train is a queer-looking vehicle serving as a bridge for any one
who may wish to cross from one side of the rail to the other.
Several lines on the pattern of the Ballybunion-Listowel have been
erected in different countries. Mr. Behr was not satisfied with his
first success, however, and determined to develop the monorail in the
direction of fast travelling, which he thought would be most easily
attained on a trestle-track. In 1893 he startled engineers by
proposing a Lightning-Express service, to transport passengers at a
velocity of 120 miles an hour. But the project seemed too ideal to
tempt money from the pockets of financiers, and Mr. Behr soon saw that
if a high-speed railway after his own heart were constructed it must
be at his own expense. He had sufficient faith in his scheme to spend
£40,000 on an experimental track at the Brussels Exhibition of 1897.
The exhibition was in two parts, connected by an electric railway, the
one at the capital, the other at Tervueren, seven miles away. Mr. Behr
built his line at Tervueren.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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