Show risk of fast traveling the german engineers are spending a large amount of time and money on experiments whose aim is the prodoc tion of an electric car or steam loco motive which can run miles an hour according to a cable dispatch they succeeded last week for the first time in reaching miles an hour but the question which naturally suf bests itself to way engineers in the united states is who wants to travel at such speed side by side with the peed records of the german exper ment we would set the discus s on which took place on the cocat on of distant signals at the lecent meet ing of the ra iway signal ng club reported in our last issue the signal engineer erg ineer of a leading railroad there stated that he had not been able to wyk satisfactorily a mechanical sig nal with a greater length of wire than 2 feet it is well 1 that it trains are to tie run with safety under the block signal system the spacing of the dis tant signals from the home must be proportioned to the speed of the fa t est train the distant signal tells the engine runner that the home signal stands at danger and that he must stop his train before reaching it and the faster the train is running the farther back must this information 1 e given him with present train speeds it is not uncommon to place the dis tant signal 2 feet bach of the home and if this is a proper distance for sixty mile an hour trains then for miles an hour the distant signal ought to be placed at least 7 feet back but trains are run a large share of the time when the signal cannot be made out at 1000 teet or anything like that distance they are often run when a semaphore cannot be clearly seen till one Is within say feet under such cond eions ane engine run ner would have just one and one halt seconds to decide whether his train were dashing on to safety or destruct don engineering news |