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Show RAIL TURTLE IS SOMETHING NEW Whether the railroads, now predominantly predom-inantly equipped with heavy engine! and rolling stock, can recover some of the ground lost to lighter competitors competi-tors by adopting some of their methods meth-ods of construction and applications of power has long been a matter of popular speculation. Technical problems prob-lems have evidently stood In the way of transformations as rapidly as the imagination may have expected, but gradual developments In that direction direc-tion are becoming increasingly apparent. ap-parent. A recent test run of a rail-plane rail-plane type of coach between Detroit and Delta, Ohio, a distance of 1.14 miles, was one of the latest evidences of this. It was a scli'-propelled coach, said to be capab'.a of running at ninety miles an hour without straining, but kept within 70 miles In Its "breaking-in" trial. To attain 70 miles, a representative representa-tive of the laboratories where the ear was constructed said, needed only half the horse power required by passenger ears of the conventional railway design. Light weight was obtained ob-tained by use of materials adopted for airplane construction, and it was explained that there would be 500 pounds of weight for each of the 64 passenger seats as compared with 5,000 pounds of vehicle weight for each passenger In the "conventional railroad coach." It was asserted that the railplane could be operated at a passenger rate of one cent 8 mile, or less than the busses charge, and that berths could be sold at approximately ap-proximately the bus rate of fare. In addition to these matters of popular interest, the technical matter mat-ter of the streamlining of the car was described In a picturesque way. It had to be different from that of an airplane or a ship, it was explained, because a rail coach does not permit any such side slip. "The linos on a railplane are much more like those of a turtle than those of a fish," the spokesman said. "A turtle walking walk-ing on Ihe bottom of a river must permit water to slip under and over It with a minimum of resistance. That's what the railplane does with a beam wind." Who would have thought of a turtle as model for a vehicle capable of traveling at the rate of 70 to 90 miles an hour? Indianapolis In-dianapolis News. |