. Electric railway gazette . rthe pages of the magazines devoted to these interests. Intreating upon this subject I shall avoid all technicalities, asfar as at all practicable, addressing myself rather to the own-ers of street railroads, the men who have the money invested,than to the engineers. In the first place, let it be remembered that street rail-road tracks in large cities, of a necessity, are built so thatthe rails are about on a level with the paving blocks, andthe inside part of the rail for vehicles a little lower so as toform two gutters into which the dirt of the streets is always
. Electric railway gazette . rthe pages of the magazines devoted to these interests. Intreating upon this subject I shall avoid all technicalities, asfar as at all practicable, addressing myself rather to the own-ers of street railroads, the men who have the money invested,than to the engineers. In the first place, let it be remembered that street rail-road tracks in large cities, of a necessity, are built so thatthe rails are about on a level with the paving blocks, andthe inside part of the rail for vehicles a little lower so as toform two gutters into which the dirt of the streets is alwayswashed by rains, and that the ordinary condition of theserails is, that they are dirty. Again, the rule is at least, that these tracks have beenbuilt with reference only to the weight of the cars, and theloads now in use. In the winter time in northern climates,for weeks at a time, these rails are overlaid with snow, orslush, or ice, in fact they are anything but clean. Again, it is the exception if somewhere in the system a. heavy grade is not to be met with; even in Chicago theseare present at the approaches to all the bridges. Havingregard to these conditions, it is plain why horse power an-swers the purpose so well. The horse can pull the car atsome rate of speed, and at some cost, to a certainty, overany kind of track, and so maintain a uniform and reliabletravel of the cars, without which, street railway property isvalueless; but as cities grow, the distance between businesscenters and residence parts becomes greater, passengertravel becomes heavier, and the expense of moving the peo-ple increases, to say nothing of the increasing importance of the time lost in getting from the one place to the other. Rapid transit is the outgrowth of this condition ofthings ; and while the horse can move a load slowly to ad-vantage, the cost of operation increases so fast with increasedspeed, that very soon a point is reached where it becomeseconomical to substitute other power. Successf
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