. Wonders and curiosities of the railway; or, Stories of the locomotive in every land; with an appendix, bringing the volume down to date . emain to be described inthis chapter. Captain C. W. Williams, U. S. A., has recently inventeda Telegraphic Car, or moving telegraph office. It was suc-cessfully tried on the Atlanta and Charlotte Air Line in1882. A line of electric wire laid alongside the track com-municates with certain key-blocks and metallic rollers fixedto the ties. On the bottom of the telegraphic car are twolong strips of metal (one on each side), which, when the caris in motion, pas
. Wonders and curiosities of the railway; or, Stories of the locomotive in every land; with an appendix, bringing the volume down to date . emain to be described inthis chapter. Captain C. W. Williams, U. S. A., has recently inventeda Telegraphic Car, or moving telegraph office. It was suc-cessfully tried on the Atlanta and Charlotte Air Line in1882. A line of electric wire laid alongside the track com-municates with certain key-blocks and metallic rollers fixedto the ties. On the bottom of the telegraphic car are twolong strips of metal (one on each side), which, when the caris in motion, pass over the successive rollers on the cross-ties, depressing them as they pass. The rollers are at suchdistances apart that the strips on the car always touch oneor another of them. When the rollers are depressed by oneof the car-strips, electric communication is established withthe wire along the track, and the deflected current passes upinto the car and down on the other side through the secondcar-strip to the main line again. By this invention notonly may trains communicate with each other at any time, A HAKDFUL OF CURIOSITIES. 123. ■^ i,..,..rtto|fii!i:^ 124 WONDERS AKD CtJRiOSITIES OF THE RAILWAY. but the train-despatcher may be in constant and close con-nection with every train on his line. Prof. P. H. Dudley, a citizen of the United States, afterworking for eight years at the invention of a piece ofmechanism to be used for the inspection of tracks, finallyperfected a machine of the following description: A strip ofplain paper, about twenty inches wide, is fed from a rollinto a small machine, where it passes under a complex set ofoverflowing pens which are connected by rods and springswith the car wheels below. For every fifty feet of trackpassed over by the Dynograph Car, the paper moves oneinch. The automatic machinery makes a complete registeron the paper strips of the state of the track: it shows thecondition of each joint, frog, and grade-crossing, and revealsat
Size: 1278px × 1955px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublishernewyo, bookyear1906
