Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1896 Excerpt:...Inst. C.e. Vol. cxxiv. u Major-General inconvenience would occur just as much with electric-traction as Webber. Mr. Dawson. Mr. P. DAWSON remarked that the capital investments in electric street-railways in the United States, which amounted to £50,000,000, and the aggregate station I.HP. used to propel electric cars in America was about 1,500,000. With reference to the Author's statement that there were 15 miles or 20 miles of accumulator storage-battery roads running in the United States, he should be glad to know in what other places they were running. The only one of which he knew was in New York, and on that road at the end of 1895 there were only two experimental cars running. Cars carrying accumulators, self-contained motor-cars, had been used 10 years or 15 years, and had always proved a financial failure. For practical purposes the conduit system was perfectly satisfactory, and had been running for some years on the Continent. At Buda-Pesth it had been running on a line 4 miles in length. It was also used in Lennox Avenue, New York, and had been likewise working successfully at Washington. The only objection to it was great prime cost. The cost of equipping the installation in Lennox Avenue was about £17,000 for a single mile of line. The cost of the trolley system was only one-third of that amount. On the tramways in the United Kingdom where the dividends were not very large, such an increase of capital expenditure could not be recommended from the investor's standpoint. There was also a conduit in course of construction in Brussels. There had been already an overhead wire there for some years, which had been most successful. It was built mostly with bracket arm-poles, 120 feet apart, with ornamental brackets running out along the Bouleva...