Manager of the Aix la Chapelle-Burtscheid Tramway.
Here are some unquestionable results. For nearly a year the first railway
engine, and for six months the first tramway engine of this new
construction, have been introduced into regular public service, and been
open to public inspection as well as to the criticism of the scientific
world. They are worked with greater ease and simplicity than ordinary
locomotive engines; the economy of their working appears, allowing for
shortcomings unavoidably attached to small establishments, to be at least
equally great: they do not emit either steam or smoke, and their action
is as noiseless as that of stationary engines.
In view of these facts it might be expected that railway managers, who
are continually told that the smoke of their engines is a serious
annoyance to the public, would be eager to make themselves acquainted
with them; it might, in particular, be expected that the managers of the
underground and suburban railways of this metropolis would lose no time
in making experiments on their own lines--if only by converting some of
their old engines into those of the fireless system--and assist a little
in the development of an invention, in the success of which they have a
tangible interest which is much greater than that of any railway on the
Continent, but there is no sign yet of their having done anything.--_E.,
in The Engineer_.
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