Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 89.djvu/405

 Railroading with Motor-Trucks

���On the Three-Ton Trucks the Front and Rear Tires Track Exactly and Are the Same Size. The Steel Rings Grip the Rubber Tires with Great Force in a Tight Fit. It Requires Only About Fifteen Minutes Time for Two Men at a Wheel to Fit On or to Remove the Flanges

��THE very latest scheme which has been employed for bringing the automobile up to maximum effi- ciency and usefulness is, as so many other inventions and improvements have been, a result of war times. The Army wanted motor-trucks that could run on railroad tracks, making them of service over the route to Mexico, in places where the railroad tracks make otherwise impassable sandy stretches usable. So A. L. Riker, an engineer widely known as a designer and builder of automobiles and motor- trucks, devised and developed a scheme for using flanged wheels on three-ton trucks, permitting their use on rails of standard width.

The flanges are made of steel, which is cast in one piece and machined ; after which it is sawed apart at the bolt-lugs. The inside is finished to the s;uT>e contour as the rubber tire and is made to fit so tightly that it

��grips the rubber tire with great force. A set of the flanges can be put on in fifteen minutes, two men being emplo}'ed on each wheel. The truck is jacked up and the flanges are pounded on with a maul. Then the bolts are pulled up ver>' tight. Remo\'ing the flange requires no greater length of time, but in an emergency the trucks can be dri\en on the roads without removing the steel rings.

���The Trucks Equipped with the Flanged Wheels Can Be Run Over the Ordinary Railroad Tracks of Standard Width. The One Above Was Loaded with Munitions and Carried Twenty Soldiers Ninety-Three Miles at Nineteen Miles an Hour

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