Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/39

Popular Science Monthly

Y means of the moving train telephone invented by A. A. Macfarlane, communication between fast moving trains may now be possible. Communication has actually been held between the experimental station and New York city. In this experiment the rails of the track were used for part of the conducting medium.

On a sidetrack near the little town of Bridesburg, Pa., experimental work has been carried on with a steel freight car. At one end of the section of track used, a two-volt battery is connected; at the other end a signaling and telephoning device is located between the tracks. The equipment consisted of a "puzzle" box and copper shoes that pick up currents from the rails. The nature and contents of this box are not being given out at present on account of some patents pending. The inventor states that what the device accomplishes is made possible, however, by his furnishing to the current a path of least resistance. Without this device, current would follow the track, run through the wheels and axles and jump to the other rail and produce a short circuit. The current simply avoids its natural outlet, follows the track until it reaches the box and shoes, where it is picked up and taken aboard the train.

Telephoning between moving trains is but a part of the importance of the invention. The real object is to produce a signaling system that will bring the danger and clear signals into the cab of the engineer. An automatic brake has also been added and tested on an engine. The device will light colored lights in the cab of the engine, as well as furnish an automatically operated block for approaching trains. Into each block current will be furnished by batteries along the track. When a train is in this block, it will short circuit the current, so that a train approaching will be automatically stopped by the brake device operated in connection with the system.

In the telephone system it will be necessary to have batteries along the track, and by the use of the shoes and box device with which the train will be equipped current will be furnished it. Then the telephone can be operated, and connection can be had through the main wires along the track, the current being carried out at the ends of the blocks. By this system, the inventor claims a moving train can be in communication with any telephone in the country.

NEW process for vulcanizing seamless rubber gloves has been brought out by which the life of the gloves is said to be considerably lengthened. Instead of vulcanizing the glove on the dipping frame after the several coatings have been applied, each consecutive layer is vulcanized as the glove structure progresses.