Page:Life in a thousand worlds.djvu/234

 through freight car two thousand miles in ten or twelve hours. Express cars are never connected with passengers cars. They are run on their own schedule and sometimes attached to freight cars.

This immense Tube Line was built by the government at great expense, but it is proving very satisfactory. No storms or floods interfere. No grade-crossings and no flying dust are known in this Tube Line which has brought the ends of Ploid together. Think of a person crossing a vast continent in a day, for the cars in this Tube Line run with frightful speed across the long stretches of level. They make as high as a three-hundred mile run in forty minutes, without stopping.

The signal and telegraph stations are fifty miles apart, sometimes more. In these long runs the motorman stops only when a signal is turned against him or if by accident he discerns a train in the Tube ahead of him.

The Tube Line is lighted by oval transparencies, in size and shape resembling an egg, soldered in specially prepared holes of