on oil, while, as to the comparative value of the two there is no
room for difference of opinion. It was the general feeling of all
who took part in the excursion that the question of the electric
lighting of trains had been solved, and that to the Brighton
Company, whatever may be the immediate results of the experiment,
would belong the honour of taking the first decisive and practical
step in the way of reform.
Four months later a correspondent of a Sheffield, England, paper,
writing from London to the _Railway Review_ of the recent trial of
electric lights on the Pullman train of the London, Brighton & South
Coast Railway, says:
There is no doubt whatever on the point that this, apart from the
question of cost, is a decided success. It is easily manageable, and
diffuses through the train a pleasant, equable light, scarcely less
agreeable than daylight. It is turned on and off with instantaneous
effect as the train enters and leaves a tunnel, and of course is
kept burning the whole of the time during the night journeys. The
electricity is stored in a number of lead plates, which are kept in
water in iron boxes in the guard's van. There are two lots, one at
either end of the train, and two mechanics in charge of them. This
discovery of the ability to store electricity for application to
lighting purposes seems to carry the discovery farther than anything
since it was first introduced. It gets over many difficulties which
seemed insuperable--especially the important one of the great waste
of power which is illustrated every night at the Savoy Theatre--and
would be applicable to the introduction of electricity for household
use.
At the Savoy, when the exigencies of the play require that the
lights should be turned down in the auditorium, there is no
cessation of the enormous power required to produce the full effect.
What happens is that by a mechanical contrivance, the electricity
is carried off from the light and goes to waste. With this system of
storing, electricity can be used just like gas, as much or as little
as people chance to want. Another great advantage is the freedom
from jumping, inseparable from the action of the driving power of
the steam engine, or of the motion power of water. The lights of the
Brighton train burn just as steadily as gas, an effect not in any
way obtained where the light is maintained directly by the driving
power of steam.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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