250 POWER DISTRIBUTION FOR ELECTRIC RAILROADS. 
one hundred miles per hour is perfectly feasible as a matter 
of engineering. It requiresno methods that are really un- 
tried, no apparatus that could not now be furnished by 
more than one manufacturer and no precautions that have 
not already been taken in the best steam railway practice. 
When there is a demand for such speed, that demand 
can be promptly met, be it for a road 100 or 1000 miles 
long. 
Increased length would simply mean a power station 
every hundred miles or so. 
Now as to the financial side of such an undertaking. 
It has been very judiciously pointed out by Dr. Louis 
Duncan in dealing with the general question of utilizing 
electricity upon railroads that no existing road having less 
than four tracks could well undertake to operate an elec- 
tric express system, since two tracks must be reserved for 
local and freight service. While a local electric service 
and express service might be worked on two tracks the 
general traffic of a system would require more accommoda- 
tion. The time is not yet ripe for accomplishing all rail- 
way service electrically, although there are forerunning 
shadows of such a probability. 
For special high speed service, however, there is ample 
opportunity mow. A road between two considerable 
centres of population with a schedule speed of one hundred 
miles per hour, would in a very short time either drive 
competing roads out of the through traffic or force them 
to the same methods. The longer the distance the more 
deadly would be the competition of fast service. Such 
speed would gather to itself much of the traffic if the ter- 
mini were but a hundred miles apart, but on a run like 
that between New York and Chicago it would almost 
monopolize it. 
In any given case the probability of financial success 
would turn on the amount of passenger and express 
traffic between the points concerned. 'The mere motive 
power expense of the high speed is not serious, nor are 
the items of repair and depreciation greatly to be feared. 
  
  
    
    
  
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
   
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
  
  
  
    
  
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