. The Street railway journal . m boilers formerly used by therefining company. Permission having been obtained severalmonths before to use the track of the Ninth Avenue Elevatedfrom Fourteenth to Fiftieth Streets, a distance of about 2miles, including several gradients, the work of placing a rail supported on umbrella insulators, was completed inJune, 1885, and during the following month the Ben Franklinbegan running experimentally at night, the road at that timebeing clear of traffic between 10 p. m. and 4 a. m., towing two,three and occasionally four-car trains. The third rail be
. The Street railway journal . m boilers formerly used by therefining company. Permission having been obtained severalmonths before to use the track of the Ninth Avenue Elevatedfrom Fourteenth to Fiftieth Streets, a distance of about 2miles, including several gradients, the work of placing a rail supported on umbrella insulators, was completed inJune, 1885, and during the following month the Ben Franklinbegan running experimentally at night, the road at that timebeing clear of traffic between 10 p. m. and 4 a. m., towing two,three and occasionally four-car trains. The third rail beingrough and rusty, caused the phosphor-bronze collectingwheels to make so fine a pyrotechnic display that onmore than one occasion the policemen threatened to arrestthe entire crew for an incendiary attempt, but afterclambering up the lattice pillars, the crew in charge of the en-tire section naturally declining to open the station gates, theywere deterred by the suave address of our good friend, G. W. STREET RAILWAY October 8, 1904. STREET RAILWAY JOURNAL. 531 Mansfield, who courteously intimated that the penalty of step-ping on the track was instant electrocution. The experimentalrunning was continued at frequent intervals until December,1885, and again during a part of the summer of 1886. The bestwork done by this motor was towing a four-car train fromFourteenth to Fiftieth Streets, including the long gradient per cent from Forty-second to Fiftieth Streets, in nineminutes, as shown by the records. The motor was of about75 nP. weighed %l/2 tons, and much too light for any regularfour-car traffic, besides being obviously defective in other par-ticulars. During the summer of 1888 the Ben Franklin was partiallyreconstructed at the Greenville works, two extra drivers beingadded and the four coupled by connecting rods, rendering thewhole wheel base available for traction, and a much larger mo-tor substituted for the one of 1885, besides other changes, in-cluding
Size: 1843px × 1355px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectstreetr, bookyear1884
