Page:EB1911 - Volume 22.djvu/873

Rh Automatic couplers resembling the Janney are adopted in a few special cases in Great Britain and other European countries, but the great majority of couplings remain non-automatic. It may be pointed out that the general employment of side buffers in Europe greatly complicates the problem of designing a satisfactory automatic coupling, while to do away with them and substitute the combined buffer-coupling, such as is used in the United States, would entail enormous difficulties in carrying on the traffic during the transition stage.

Brakes.—In the United States the Safety Appliance Act of 1893 also forbade the railways, after the 1st of January 1898, to run trains which did not contain a “sufficient number” of cars equipped with continuous brakes to enable the speed to be controlled from the engine. This law, however, did not serve in practice to secure so general a use of power brakes on freight trains as was thought desirable, and another act was passed in 1903 to give the Interstate Commerce Commission authority to prescribe what should be the minimum number of power-braked cars in each train. This minimum was at first fixed at 50%, but on and after the 1st of August 1906 it was raised to 75%, with the result that soon after that date practically all the rolling stock of American railways, whether passenger or freight, was provided with compressed air brakes. In the United Kingdom the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 empowered the Board of Trade to require all passenger trains, within a reasonable period, to be fitted with automatic continuous brakes, and now all the passenger stock, with a few trifling exceptions, is provided with either compressed-air or vacuum brakes (see ), and sometimes with both. But goods and mineral trains so fitted are rare, and the same is the case on the continent of Europe, where, however, such brakes are generally employed on passenger trains.

  The great concentration of population in cities during the 19th century brought into existence a class of railways to which the name of intra-urban may be applied. Such lines are primarily intended to supply quick means of passenger communication within the limits of cities, and are to be distinguished on the one hand from surface tramways, and on the other from those portions of trunk or other lines which lie within city boundaries, although the latter may incidentally do a local or intra-urban business. Intra-urban railways, as compared with ordinary railways, are characterized by shortness of length, great cost per mile, and by a traffic almost exclusively passenger, the burden of which is enormously heavy. For the purpose of connecting the greatest possible number of points of concentrated travel, the first railways were laid round the boundaries of areas approximately circular, the theory being that the short walk from the circumference of the circle to any point within it would be no serious detention. It has been found, however, in the case of such circular or belt railways, that the time lost in traversing the circle and in walking from the circumference to the centre is so great that the gain in journey speed over a direct surface tramway or omnibus is entirely lost. Later intra-urban railways in nearly every case have been built, so far as possible, on straight lines, radiating from the business centre or point of maximum congestion of travel to the outer limits of the city; and, while not attempting to serve all the population through the agency of the line, make an effort to serve a portion in the best possible manner—that is, with direct transit.

The actual beginning of the construction of intra-urban railways was in 1853, when powers were obtained to build a line, 2¼ m. long, from Edgware Road to King’s Cross, in London, from which beginning the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District railways developed. These railways, which in part are operated jointly, were given a circular location, but the shortcomings of this plan soon became apparent. It was found that there was not sufficient traffic to support them as purely intra-urban lines, and they have since been extended into the outskirts of London to reach the suburban traffic.

The Metropolitan and Metropolitan District railways followed the art of railway building as it existed at the time they were laid out. Wherever possible the lines were constructed in open cutting, to ensure adequate ventilation; and where this was not possible they were built by a method suggestively named “cut and cover.” A trench was first excavated to the proper depth, then the side walls and arched roof of brick were put in place, earth was filled in behind and over the arch, and the surface of the ground restored, either by paving where streets were followed, or by actually being built over with houses where the lines passed under private property. Where the depth to rail-level was too great for cut-and-cover methods, ordinary tunnelling processes were used; and where the trench was too shallow for the arched roof, heavy girders, sometimes of cast iron, bridged it between the side walls, longitudinal arches being turned between them (fig. 30).



The next development in intra-urban railways was an elevated line in the city of New York. Probably the first suggestion for an elevated railway was made by Colonel Stevens, of Hoboken, New Jersey, as early as 1831, when the whole art of railway construction was in its infancy. He proposed to build an elevated railway on a single line of posts, placed along the curb-line of the street: a suggestion which embodies not only the general plan of an elevated structure, but the most striking feature of it as subsequently built—namely, a railway supported 