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Show t 1 IKF.LES3 telegraphy for the YT moving train promises to JLL- make railroad travel safer in the future. The beginning of tliis service was started but the other day on the Buffalo limited uf the iielaware. Lackawanna and Western railroad. There are plenty of examples of what the wireless has done for oceangoing ocean-going shipping in the way of spreading spread-ing news, in giving helpful warnings and in calling succor from afar to injured in-jured ships. Its application to railroading rail-roading will be for a somewhat different differ-ent purpose. The block signal system now commonly com-monly adopted in combination with track contacts has done wonders in reducing re-ducing the risk of accidents. The tower tow-er men are stationed every few miles, and unless something goes wrong inside in-side the block the train must clear each zone within a certain tkne.' When it does not do so the watcher at the far end of the block knows that something is amiss; but what? The answer may be one of a score of things and the towermen are neces- sarily in ignorance until some one from the halted train brings the news. Then, and only then, the railroad people peo-ple at distant points can be reached by telegraph and the proper steps taken to meet the emergency! The trainman carrying the message to the block tower may have to cover a distance of a couple of miles. This is not so bad in daylightand in good weather, but what of the situation when there is a driving snowstorm or ice covers tne grounu : iu tower to call for assistance then becomes be-comes a desperately long struggle and the cause of delay that may imperil many lives. Again it happens every now and then that an engineer fails to see cautionary cau-tionary signals which should make him slacken speed or bring his train to a standstill. The result may be a collision with loss of life. It will therefore be seen how desirable desir-able it is that each train shojild have its own means of creating about it a cautionary zone quite independently of the fixed track and block signals, this zone to be communicable to other trains directly, in this fashion producing produc-ing a safety system within a safety system and one that would be immediately imme-diately available at every point along the line. This is not in theory a novelty; but practical accomplishment has had to contend with many obstacles. Something akin to this was evolved years ago in the form of a signal telegraph tele-graph which made use of track contacts con-tacts at frequent points, or of magnetic mag-netic impulses aroused at stated intervals, inter-vals, but the arch enemy was the weather, and especially snow and ice. The apparatus worked well experimentally experi-mentally until these foes to efficiency intervened, and then the whole technically tech-nically beautiful installation failed to operate. Wireless telegraphy promises prom-ises to do the needed work. If you look at a map of the Lackawanna Lacka-wanna railroad you will find that Bing-hamton Bing-hamton is what the railroad man calls the neck of the traffic bottle, for there converge no fewer than three branches of the road. A break in train schedules sched-ules through any delay there may affect af-fect all three of these centering routes. Nature has added to the difficulties dif-ficulties by reason of the topography of the country. In a part of the neighboring neigh-boring mountainous section snow and sleet especially have a way of hampering ham-pering traffic. These conditions double the task of the engine driver, who must watch all the more carefully every signal, and they likewise increase immensely the stress upon the tower man. These circumstances, cir-cumstances, and an accident which occurred upon the road a year ago, prompted the experiments with the wireless installation. There were several sev-eral serious obstacles to overcome. Wireless telegraphy, as every one knows, usually calls for tall masts or towers from which the aerials or an-tannae an-tannae can be spread, and this element ele-ment of height and length of dispatching dispatch-ing and intercepting filaments influences influ-ences directly the efficiency of the apparatus, ap-paratus, both in creating Hertzian waves and in being sensitive to the ether vibrations having their source elsewhere. How. then, were these requirements to be met upon a swiftly swift-ly moving train? As a matter of fact, the clearance between the roofs of the coaches and the tops of the bridges and tunnels is a matter of only a few inches. Would aerials as low as this answer? Only experimenting would solve the question, ques-tion, and the electrical experts set about doing it in this way: A single line of wire arranged like a rectangle is strung from four low stanchions placed at each corner of the car ends, actually below the crest of the roof. By doing this upon four cars, giving a total length of aerials Df something like 550 feet, an arrange- f 1 O V ft It - 1 Vs 1 y. L Imp A ment has been reached w-hich works admirably and incidentally subscribes to the physical limitations of height imposed by structures along the roadway. road-way. But while this placing of the wires sufficed when running over open country, coun-try, there was still a doubt about what would happen wien the train skirted along winding rivers with mountains hemming in the view and seemingly' offering an obstacle to the sending and the receiving of wireless impulses. It is along parts or tne roaa oi tnis character that the wireless telegraph would" be of the greatest service, because be-cause the sinuous path of the track makes it impossible for the towerman to see trains for more than a short distance, and block signals worked by track contacts are similarly obscured by bends in the route. Would the wireless waves, rise out of the depth of the valleys and get beyond to receiving re-ceiving stations, or would the vibrations vibra-tions started from distant points get over the mountains and down into the winding passes? In anticipation of probable difficulties difficul-ties in this department of the work the Lackawanna railroad erected at Scranton and at Binghamton tall wireless wire-less towers and these were expected to offset the lowness of the aerials upon the train. Whether these tall towers are actually necessary for the immediate work cut out for them is not of present concern; they may be a necessary part of the system when ultimately elaborated. But an interesting inter-esting fact has developed: The messages mes-sages leaving the moving train are unquestionably able to get past intervening inter-vening mountains and to climb from the meandering valleys and find their way to antennae of the towers at Scranton and Binghamton. According to the experts, the Hertzian Hert-zian waves don't do this by climbing the hills, but by actually going through them. This is because the earth is a great magnet, and the wireless wire-less waves virtually wade along partly part-ly through the ground and partly through the air. Even wireless telegraph involves an electrical circuit; the flow must eventually even-tually return to the ground. In this case the ground is the track upon which the cars move. What would happen If the electrical discharge at the instant of receiving a message aboard the train should pass into the rail? Wouldn't this interfere with the current that already runs through the rails when a passing train causes the automatic operating of some of the block signals? Wouldn't the two electrical elec-trical discharges cause signal troubles? trou-bles? The railroad electricians had their doubts, but the wireless men believed otherwise, and the tests have shown that there was no reason for anxiety. But why? you wrill ask. Just where the Hertzian waves return to the earth they have a zero of electrical energy, or potential, as the expert expresses it. These points are the nodal, or neutral neu-tral points, corresponding to the places on a vibrating string where the double curves meet and cross and where there is no motion. For this reason the wireless discharge Into the track has no power to upset the regular reg-ular current which controls the operating oper-ating of the block signals. Wireless telegraphy calls for a good deal of energy in the spark which creates the Hertzian waves, and the question was: Where was this current cur-rent to be obtained? In the present instance it has been drawn from the batteries supplying current for the incandescent in-candescent lighting system. An independent inde-pendent motor could easily be provided provid-ed for the sole purpose of furnishina energy for the wireless apparatus, and separate storage batteries could also be installed to hold enough energy in reserve to do a good deal of telegraphing telegraph-ing after the train had halted for one reason or another. The Marconi outfit has been especially espe-cially developed for railroad service. Space and weight had to be drawn upon economically and the whole system sys-tem is just about one-quarter the size of an ordinary installation. This naturally nat-urally has imposed refinements and made it necessary to take great care in offsetting the jarring vibrations of a speeding train. Again the electrical engineers have done well, because even upon the first run the apparatus functioned encouragingly. Ut course tnere are yet onsracies iu be surmounted, because there are refinements re-finements of adjustment that radically affect perfect working. The principal one of these has been that of regulating regu-lating the wave lengths and in getting get-ting the installation upon the moving train turned to the distant stations. The wave lengths generated by the train equipment are about S00 meters long, or in the neighborhood of half a mile, and these have permitted of the maintenance of wireless communica-tidn communica-tidn for a distance just short of 35 miles. So far the operator aboard the train has been more successful in diSpaltehing than in receiving messages mes-sages and the immediate efforts will be directed toward putting him upon an equality with his fellows at the fixed stations. ' Upon the trial run the conductor of the Buffalo limited was taken 111 and when thirty-odd miles from Scranton a wireless call was dispatched for a relief conductor. The substitute was on hand when the train pulled into that station. Again, there were more passengers' than seats, and in the same way an extra coach was ordered and made ready by the time the limited pulled into Binghamton. Upon a later run news items were received aboard the train and bulletins posted from time to time for the edification of the pas-, sengers. In time It will be possible, it is believed, for passengers to send, and receive messages at any moment of the day or night while the trains are speeding along at their highest rate. What is perfectly plain is the fact that the advent of the wireless operator opera-tor aboard a moving train adds just one more watcher who will be continually con-tinually on the alert and can co-operate with towermen in keeping the engine en-gine driver informed as to the- Btate of the road ahead. Logically the next development of the system will be a telephone installation extending from the room of the wireless operator to the cab of the locomotive and perhaps even to the fireman's position if his task separates him from the engineer. Of course the question of expense must be considered always, and fortunately for-tunately the outlay involved in this case is not prohibitive. The stationary station-ary plants at Scranton and Binghamton Bingham-ton have apparatus costing $3,000 for each, independently of the wireless tnwpw and the train pnnitlment rostR about half this. The operator need be but little more skilful than the average aver-age railroad telegrapher. |