The Electric Railway - 4

The Electric Railway - 4

 a few being retained under the seat for chance emergencies. Like the boxes, this coil was

in series with the armature, and subject to plugging in and out at will by the motorman.

Thus equipped, the locomotive was found quite satisfactory, and long did yeoman

service. It was given three cars to pull, one an open awning-car with two park benches

placed back to back; one a flat freight-car, and one box-car dubbed the "Pullman," with

which Edison illustrated a system of electric braking. Although work had been begun so

early in the year, and the road had been operating since May, it was not until July that

Edison executed any application for patents on his "electromagnetic railway engine," or

his ingenious braking system. Every inventor knows how largely his fate lies in the hands

of a competent and alert patent attorney, in both the preparation and the prosecution of

his case; and Mr. Sprague is justified in observing in his Century article: ""The paucity of

controlling claims obtained in these early patents is remarkable." It is notorious that

Edison did not then enjoy the skilful aid in safeguarding his ideas that he commanded

later.

The daily newspapers and technical journals lost no time in bringing the road to public

attention, and the New York Herald of June 25th was swift to suggest that here was the

locomotive that would be "most pleasing to the average New Yorker, whose head has

ached with noise, whose eyes have been filled with dust, or whose clothes have been

ruined with oil." A couple of days later, the Daily Graphic illustrated and described the

road and published a sketch of a one-hundred-horse-power electric locomotive for the use

of the Pennsylvania Railroad between Perth Amboy and Rahway. Visitors, of course,

were numerous, including many curious, sceptical railroad managers, few if any of whom

except Villard could see the slightest use for the new motive power. There is, perhaps,

some excuse for such indifference. No men in the world have more new inventions

brought to them than railroad managers, and this was the rankest kind of novelty. It was

not, indeed, until a year later, in May, 1881, that the first regular road collecting fares was

put in operation--a little stretch of one and a half miles from Berlin to Lichterfelde, with

one miniature motorcar. Edison was in reality doing some heavy electric- railway

engineering, his apparatus full of ideas, suggestions, prophecies; but to the operators of

long trunk lines it must have seemed utterly insignificant and "excellent fooling."

Speaking of this situation, Mr. Edison says: "One day Frank Thomson, the President of

the Pennsylvania Railroad, came out to see the electric light and the electric railway in

operation. The latter was then about a mile long. He rode on it. At that time I was getting

out plans to make an electric locomotive of three hundred horse-power with six-foot

drivers, with the idea of showing people that they could dispense with their steam

locomotives. Mr. Thomson made the objection that it was impracticable, and that it

would be impossible to supplant steam. His great experience and standing threw a wet

blanket on my hopes. But I thought he might perhaps be mistaken, as there had been

many such instances on record. I continued to work on the plans, and about three years

later I started to build the locomotive at the works at Goerck Street, and had it about

finished when I was switched off on some other work. One of the reasons why I felt the

electric railway to be eminently practical was that Henry Villard, the President of the

Northern Pacific, said that one of the greatest things that could be done would be to build

right-angle feeders into the wheat-fields of Dakota and bring in the wheat to the main

lines, as the farmers then had to draw it from forty to eighty miles. There was a point

where it would not pay to raise it at all; and large areas of the country were thus of no

value. I conceived the idea of building a very light railroad of narrow gauge, and had got

all the data as to the winds on the plains, and found that it would be possible with very

large windmills to supply enough power to drive those wheat trains."

Among others who visited the little road at this juncture were persons interested in the

Manhattan Elevated system of New York, on which experiments were repeatedly tried

later, but which was not destined to adopt a method so obviously well suited to all the

conditions until after many successful demonstrations had been made on elevated roads

elsewhere. It must be admitted that Mr. Edison was not very profoundly impressed with

the desire entertained in that quarter to utilize any improvement, for he remarks: "When

the Elevated Railroad in New York, up Sixth Avenue, was started there was a great

clamor about the noise, and injunctions were threatened. The management engaged me to

make a report on the cause of the noise. I constructed an instrument that would record the

sound, and set out to make a preliminary report, but I found that they never intended to

do anything but let the people complain."