To the Editor of the Nonre-Cama Dany News.
Sm,—In your leading article this mornivg, mention is made of the use of compressed gas as the motive power for Tramways. This is a comparatively recent innovation and a few particulars may prove interesting.
The Gas. Engine as tramway motor was first applied on the line between Neuchatel and St. Blaize in 1892. In 1893 the Dessau and Dresden line and the Croydon and Thornton Heath Tramways Ca. adopted it. The cars are similar in appearance to the ordinary horse car with garden seats on top and as far as the passengers are +eoncerned there is nothing to indicate the propelling poweres there is neither noise, smell, or smoke, only " slight vibration inseparable from any machinery in motion.
ervoirs and machinery are placed under the seats and platforms and are concealed by flaps of cheet iron, which also permit of access for the attendant. The reservoirs contain. a supply of gas under pressure sufficient for a ru of eight to ten miles, They then require refilling at a Company Station; which is a building containing a gas engine, set of compressor pumps, and a storage cylinder, and ix to the Gas Tramway what a generating station is to an Electric Tramway, but its cost is very much less, varying according to the length of the line from £400 to £600. "Quoting from Mr. D. Kinnear Clark's. work on "Tramways,"
cost of a Gas Tramear to carry 20 pasers is £750 and the consumption of 34 cubic feet per mile which at 3s. per 1,000 amounts to about 1 pence.
Tu, 1896 Gas Traction was in use on the Hirschberg and Hemsdorf line and an eight-mile line between Blackpool, St. Ani and Lytham in Lancashire was opened in the summer, The success of these lines has led to experimental cars being introduced at Ipswich and Swansea, and there are several continental towns where the subject under consideration. Whi duced Gas Traction has proved cheaper than either horse, cable, or electricity. Tam, ete., Shanghai Gas Company, Engineer's Office, 4th March.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.