246 POWER DISTRIBUTION FOR ELECTRIC RAILROADS.
that with a nearly level track, 1000 h. p. would suffice for
all service conditions, while the normal output would be
between 500 h. p. and 600 h. p.
Now this output can readily be reached with a powet-
ful locomotive, and except for the difficulties of firing, the
speed mentioned could be maintained by a locomotive with
a single car. The advantage of electricity lies with the
removal of this difficulty and decrease of useless weight,
together with what advantage can be gained from a very
large and perfect power plant. That such an output can
easily be reached by motors on the motor car admits of no
question, since it has already been done by the Baltimore
& Ohio tunnel locomotives under more trving conditions,
i. e., moderate speed and enormously heavier trains, thus
robbing the motors of the advantage of high rotative speed.
As regards track, the best is required and the curves
should be very moderate, not less, perhaps, than 2000 ft.
radius. But the speeds in question are quite feasible on a
well laid and well ballasted track. Dr. P. H. Dudley, prob-
ably the greatest living authority on track, designed sev-
eral years ago a 103 lb. rail section which he considered
would give a perfectly safe track for speeds as high as 120
miles per hour, and his dynagraph records show, moreover,
that for such a track there is a marked saving in power
owing to much smaller deflections of the rails. A 140 ton
electric train would give much less strain on the track than
is now found in the case of fast express trains of approx-
imately double that weight.
Nor is the driving wheel speed dangerously high.
With good steel wheels the assumed speed would have to be
doubled before the factor of safety would be seriously re-
duced.
Altogether, the evidence shows that a schedule speed
of one hundred miles per hour is quite possible without
calling for extraordinary power, unusual material of con-
struction or great innovations of any kind.
As to methods, divers are available. Ordinary con-
tinuous current motors worked at, say, 1000 to 1500 volts
o
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