Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/376

 360 Popular Science Monthly

Scrub Your Walls as Well as Your The Gasoline Automobile in the Role

Floors by Machinery of Railroad Locomotive

'ITH the mechanical floor-scrubber already added to the long list of newly-contrived devices for insuring ab- solute cleanliness and saving the back and disposition of

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��the modern house- keeper, it is only natural that the next addition should be the mechanical wall- rubber. Let it not be imagined, how- ever, that the wall- rubber is for use only in the home. Un- like the floor-scrub- ber, it can be used wherever there is need of polishing. Adapted for clean- ing sunken panels, bands, spots, slabs and walls of marble, granite and tile, it can be used in the home, in the office building, in the cem- etery and in the sub- way with equal facility and good results.

The machine is portable. It is driven by an electric motor which receives its power from an electric-light socket. The jointed arm to which the polisher is attached has a vertical reach of six and one half feet from the floor and a horizontal reach of eight feet. Two spiral springs counteract the weight of the arm, so that the operator has only to guide the polisher over the surface to be cleaned.

A compensating shaft attached to the polisher keeps it pressed against irregular surfaces. Water is forced through the polisher by a small pump operated by the motor. A reservoir in the cabinet part of the machine holds the water. It is sup- plied to the brush in a con- stant stream, which may be regulated so that only a small amount, enough to merely moisten the brush, or a copious flood for rinsing large areas at a time, may be ob- tained. No effort on the part of the operator is required except to guide the rubber.

���The wall-rubbing machine is portable and is operated from any electric-light socket

��FOR long trunk lines, the steam locomo- tive has proven itself to be the most economical type of tractor. For short lines, and for factor}- yards or railroad terminals, however, steam propulsion is about the most ex- pensive. Whether the locomotive is standing idle* or not, steam must be kept up, and coal must be used continuously. The gasoline loco- motive which has now entered the field is doing all that the steam locomotive does, without the former's waste when inactive.

This gasoline loco- motive is virtually the ordinary auto- mobile mounted on a locomotive frame. The six cylinders of the huge gasoline en-

��gine furnish one hundred and sixty horse- power. Connecting the engine shaft with the wheel driving-cranks on either side of the locomotive are a rigid gear transmission and an automobile friction clutch of ap- propriate dimensions. The side-bars con- necting the wheels with the cranks are exactly similar to those on the regular steam locomotive.

When the gasoline, which is stored on the top of the hood, is fed into the engine under full load conditions, the locomotive can haul seven modern freight cars filled to their fifty- ton capacity at a speed of six miles an hour.

���This locomotive, hauling seven cars, is driven by a six-cyl- inder gasoline engine giving one hundred and s'-Hy horsepower

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