The thirty pound bicycle has safely carried ten times its weight. A
man has in one day propelled himself and his machine _five hundred
and fifteen miles_. The principle of the bicycle, saving enormously
in weight and friction, is here presented for application to existing
and to future steam and electric roads without change of gauge or
interference with existing trains.
Turn a plank up edge-wise and it will carry many-fold greater load than
it would flat-wise: so by constructing two-story cars, about four feet
wide and fourteen feet deep, greatly increased strength and lightness
may be secured.
The cellular construction of the bamboo makes it extremely light and
yet strong; so it is with the Bicycle car, constructed with veneer and
steel, and composed of eighteen separate compartments corresponding to
the cells of the bamboo.
It is the aim of this invention to reduce the undulations and friction
of a car in motion, thereby largely increasing safety and speed, and
saving wear and tear on both rolling stock and track.
Engines are now required to drive from four to eight wheels held in
line back of the cylinders. On rounding curves the framing is strained
by friction and wedging, entailing a large loss of power. The wheels,
rails, and cars throughout suffer proportionately from grinding and
shearing. The Bicycle engine, with its double-flanged wheels, follows
any curve with a small loss of power.
One or more driving-wheels running on a single rail is the simplest of
all means of transportation; so manifest is it that the U. S. Patent
Examiner, in charge of the railroad department, writing to the Hon. E.
M. Boynton, the inventor, calls it “a practical solution of the problem
of increased rate of speed—simple, inexpensive, practical.”
A driving-wheel six feet in diameter can doubtless be made to run a
Bicycle locomotive one hundred to one hundred and twenty miles an hour
with short stroke engines, and double the number of revolutions they
now make, its speed being limited only by friction and air pressure.
Ninety miles an hour, however, would probably for the present satisfy
all reasonable wants for express trains, and a proportionately lower
rate of speed for local and freight trains.
The overhead guiding beam is set inward, on curves, tipping the train
toward the center of the curve, thus counteracting the centrifugal
force, like a bicycle.
Practice has demonstrated that the twenty-two ton Bicycle locomotive is
so truly balanced, that when running on a tangent, the upper horizontal
bearing-wheels seldom touch the overhead guide beam, an inch space
being left between them; and it is found that even when running on
curves, at high rates of speed, as the train is made to lean inward
to balance the centrifugal force, the friction of the overhead or
guiding-wheels is but trifling.
The _Engineering News_ of March 2, 1889, says:
“That the motion of a train running on a single rail in this manner
might be very much smoother and safer, seems to us reasonable, or at
least a chance worth thorough investigation. It is a wholly different
matter from narrowing the gauge. So long as the reliance for stability
is on the support of a pair of rails (the center of gravity falling
between them), all narrowing of gauge must be a disadvantage; and as
it is impossible to maintain a pair of rails exactly horizontal, there
must inevitably be a jerking of the train from side to side, which,
at high speed, becomes exceedingly dangerous; because, whenever the
level is not perfect, there is a tendency created to lateral impact
against one rail or the other. In bicycle motion all this tendency
is eliminated. There is nothing but the forward motion to maintain
perpendicularity in the vehicles (except when the top guard-rail comes
by accident into action), nor is anything more needed. Hence there is
only the vertical irregularities of the rail to be taken into account;
and even if they should cause considerable bouncing at points, it is
directly up and down, without tendency to cause lateral motion, the
center of gravity being directly over the point of support tending,
unaided, to stay there.[1] Taking into account this great potential
advantage and the smaller cross-section of the train, it appears
reasonable that a much higher rate of speed may be safely maintained
than is either possible or safe with double-rail vehicles.”
[Illustration: _Cross Section of Bicycle Structure and Bicycle Electric
Car._]
Comparing weight to work done, about one ton of train weight is
now required to convey a passenger, and the average freight train,
empty, weighs more than the paying freight carried by it; whereas
it is practicable for the Bicycle trains to be made to carry more
than five times their own weight without five-fold loss of wasteful
friction, thus affecting a saving of at least ten-fold in freight, and
twenty-fold on passenger trains. The Bicycle cars already built, seat
108 passengers, and weigh complete only five tons.