Home on a Train
SOME hobbyists let their hobby occupy them night and day. Well, the reverse is true of Dr. John Payne Roberts. He occupies his hobby!
For Dr. Roberts and his wife make their home in an old railroad car which is a prize exhibit of the Museum of Transport, located in Kirkwood, on the western outskirts of St. Louis. The Museum contains a remarkable collection of old railroad equipment.
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Air-Rail Line Spans America in 48 Hours
RECENT inauguration of regular 48-hour New York to Los Angeles or San Francisco air-rail service by the Transcontinental Air Transport, Inc., in which the Pennsylvania railroad is financially interested, is interpreted as the outstanding commercial aviation development of 1929 in the United States.
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I love the upside down train, that’s a great idea.
A Century of Railroads on Parade
OLD AND NEW fashions in American railroads are on exhibit at Chicago’s lake front in a Railroad Fair celebrating 100 years of railroading in the Middle West. Pioneer locomotives with steam up run alongside the newest steam and Diesel-electric trains, while some cars yet unbuilt are shown in mockup form.
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Gliding Cars Planned for new Railway
TRAINS THAT WOULD SKIM TRACKS AT HIGH SPEEDS PROPOSED IN DARING TRANSPORTATION SCHEME IMAGINE a flying railroad in which captive airplanes serve as cars. Skimming through the air, the streamlined cars are expected to attain speeds up to more than 200 miles an hour. A cage of rails restrains them from actually leaving the track.
That is a brief outline of a project for a high-speed transportation system put forward by a New York engineer, Walter H. Judson, pioneer aviator and formerly chief engineer for a railway car manufacturer. In Judson’s opinion, all engineering details have been worked out. With the cooperation of makers of railway and electrical machinery, structural steelwork, and airplane equipment, he has prepared a complete plan.
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Twin Amphibian Cars for Monorail
Swift, Overhead Trams to Be “Equipped with Floats to Cross Water Like Boats AMPHIBIAN trains that can whiz above desert sands on an overhead rail, or plunge into the water to ford a river, are contemplated by the Soviet Government in an amazing plan to tap mineral wealth in Turkestan. They are to travel three projected monorail lines of unprecedented design, totaling 332 miles in length and crossing deserts and rivers.
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Wow, I had no idea this existed, it reminds me of the system they have at Disney World. It seems like a really useful idea for a big city. Apparently it went under, so to speak, in 1959.
Chicago’s Freight Subway Does the Work of 5000 Trucks
ONLY one out of a thousand residents of Chicago realizes that his city has an extensive subway system. No people ride in this subway, however, except the operators of the trains, for it is purely a freight subway. The photo above gives some idea of how the loop district is undermined by a network of tunnels; practically every department store and large business establishment has underground connections with the freight subway.
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It may be impossible, but, damn is it cool looking!
New Rail Car Runs on Air-Electric Perpetual Drive
FROM coast to coast by rail in 24 hours, traveling literally on air—that is what W. E. Boyette of Atlanta, Georgia, claims for his invention, a railroad engine that runs almost entirely on air.
Air for fuel—speeds of up to 125 miles an hour on rails—low transportation costs-—these are possibilities conjured by Boyette’s air electric car. After being started by batteries, the car needs only air to keep it running—a close approach to perpetual motion.
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The NEW ERA of RAILROADING
IT took ninety years to start the revolution that set the streamline train on its time-shattering career. You knew that revolution had come when you read that the fiery old iron horse had been stabled and in its place, trailing a string of coaches straight and smooth as an arrow’s shaft, was no grimy black engine but a strange new power car of “cobalt and sarasota blue, golden olive and pimpernel scarlet.” Like an arrow the streamliner shot across the country, caught the public imagination, beckoned a new generation that thought the railways outmoded and slow to come for a thrilling hundred-mile-an-hour ride in this aluminum bullet.
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Endless BELT TRAINS for Future Cities
TRANSPORTATION of city inhabitants through subway or overhead tubes on endlessly moving belts, providing more speed and comfort than our present systems of passenger service, loom as a possibility, according to Norman W. Storer, engineer of the Westinghouse Electrical Co., who has developed the idea.
As described by Mr. Storer, the system is an arrangement of continuous trains or belts of cars, running on parallel tracks. There is a stationary loading platform along the entire course of the system.
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Gyroscope Monorail Car to Travel 300 Miles per Hour
This German monorail will revolutionize rail transportation. At 300 miles per hour it will meet the challenge of the air transport lines.
RAILROADS may challenge the increased popularity of air travel by developing a superspeed monorail car. Balanced by gyroscope and controlled by radio, the gyroscope monorail would be capable of more than 300 miles an hour, its inventor claims.
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Grow Up, Railroads!
BY JACQUES MARTIAL
THE year 1869 was a fateful one in the history of railroads. It was during that year that George Stephenson won the “Battle of the Gauges” over his opponent Brunei, the famous engineer of the Great. Western Railways.
This “victory,” which decided in favor of the narrower gauge of 4 feet 8-1/2 inches, was a fundamental error. From it stem practically all the ills of the present-day railroads. Greater speed, cost of operation, volume, comfort, loads, economy— every possible progressive step needed today is prevented by the initial shortsighted decision won by Stephenson. History is not clear as to how the odd figure of 4 feet 8-1/2 inches was arrived at. Some say it was based upon the distance beteen the Romans’ wheel ruts. Others claim that Stephenson simply found it in the distance between the wheels of his own cart.
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