New Street Car Power

NEW STREET CAR POWER

It Is Electricity Harnessed by a Magnet System.

GREAT SAVING IN FUEL CLAIMED

Invention of P.W. Leffler Is Also Said to Greatly Increase the Speed of Cars - They Are Always Under Perfect Control and Thus Can Be Run Faster.

Small elctro magnets imbedded between the rails of the tracks were used to pull a street railway car in Chicago the other day. Unlike those in a trolley car, the magnets did not work directly in turning the wheels. They did not even touch the iron suspended under the car or any part of it. They acted as controlled teasers, says the Chicago Record-Herald. All this took place with a ten foot model car, accommodating sic peope, on a track 180 feet long. The car went round and ouch the track, backward and forward, fast or slow, at the will of the operator, who worked with but a single lever. And to stop it no breaks were needed.

A change in the method of street railway propulsion is the possible result. This public test, after many that have been made with apparatus more crude, led the inventor, P.W. Leffler, who is apparently a conservative mechanic and electrician, to say: "We either have the biggest thing going or else nothing at all. And I am convinced that we have the system which will do away with the trolley, overhead or underground."

The fundamental idea of the new system is "to cut a motor in two." The electro magnets form one-half of the motor and are placed in the ground in a line half way between the tracks. The other part, the armature, is attached lengthwise to the bottom of the car. It is a long iron bar cut up into feet and so attached that the ends ordinarily are within an inch of the top of the magnet boxes. But the primary difference between the new system and the trolley car motor is that the electro magnets do not cause the armature to turn the wheels. The new car is not propelled by the friction of the wheels with the track, but by the invisible force of magnetism.

A dynamo is required for the new system. Each magnet is connected with main feed wires heavily insulated and bringing electricity from the power house. In fact, the elctro magnets are coils of wire magnetized by the electricity running through them. But when the car is not running over them the magnets are not magnetic. In other words, they are not in the circuit except when the car comes over them.

An arrangement of the magnets according to polarity, first a north, or positive, and then a south, or negative, is the scheme for attracting the car and making it run smoothly. In the car, on the other hand, by the use of a small storage battery, which is the only electrical device above ground, the palarity of the feet of the armature is controlled. The result is that a positive or north foot of the armature is in a position where it is being drawn forward by a negative magnet in the track and at the same time pushed forward by a positive magnet in the track on account of the repelling force of like poles. In this connection there is a "commutator," which keeps changing the polarity of the feet so that the car does not get "stuck." However, the operator of the car can with one simple movement of his lever stop it or reverse the movement instead.

The great saving which the inventor claims is in the amount of electricity required. He says seventy-five amperes will suffice for forty cars, while with the present trolley system seventy-five amperes are required for one car. He says the saving in coal will be more than one-half. It is also claimed that the cars can be run faster than trolley cars because they are always under prefect control. They can never jump the track because there is a down pull as well as a forward pull in the magnets. It is thought that it will be easy to run the cars at 100 miles an hour with safety.