In the _Mechanics’ Magazine_ for July 22nd, 1837, is to be found the
following remarkable suggestion:—“In many parts of the new railroads,
where there has been some objection to the locomotive engines, stationary
ones are resorted to, as everyone knows to draw the vehicles along. Why
might not these vehicles be balloons? Why, instead of being dragged on
the surface of the ground, along costly viaducts or under disagreeable
tunnels, might they not travel two or three hundred feet high? By
balloons, I mean, of course, anything raised in the air by means of a gas
lighter than the air. They might be of all shapes and sizes to suit
convenience. The practicability of this plan does not seem to be
doubtful. Its advantages are obvious. Instead of having to purchase, as
for a railway, the whole line of track passed over, the company for a
balloon-way would only have to procure those spots of ground on which
they proposed to erect stationary engines; and these need in no case be
of peculiar value, since their being a hundred yards one way or the other
would make little difference. Viaducts of course would never be
necessary, cuttings in very few occasions indeed, if at all. The chief
expense of balloons is their inflation, which is renewed at every new
ascent; but in these balloons the gas once in need never to be let out,
and one inflation would be enough.”
The same writer a few years later on observes:—“One feature of the
air-way to supersede the railway would be, that besides preventing the
destruction of the architectural beauties of the metropolis, now menaced
by the multitudinous network of viaducts and subways at war with the
existing thoroughfares, it would occasion the construction of numerous
lofty towers as stations of arrival and departure, which would afford an
opportunity of architectural effect hitherto undreamed of.”