Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/397

 Popular Science Moiithlij 381

Making Two Wheels Take the Place Shock-Absorbers for Eggs on Freight

Cars Fill a Great Need

��of Three

NECESSITY is the mother of inven tion. When the wheel of the side attached to

��car

the motorcycle of Mr. John E. Hogg was crushed be- yond repair by a skidding truck, while Mr. Hogg was riding with his wife near Pamona, Calif., on his way to Los Angeles, the cyclist did not abandon his trip, but completed his journey in the manner shown in the picture. First he removed the broken wheel and then he lashed a skid, improvised of a heavy board, under the chassis

of the sidecar. A run of a few feet was sufficient to enable him to lift the car, with his wife sitting in it, off the ground and maintaining his balance by tilting his wheel and keeping it at the required angle. The run of twenty-five miles to Los Angeles was made without mishap, and at an average speed of thirty to thirty-five miles an hour. Much can be accom- plished by a combination of necessity and ingenuity.

���After a skidding truck had smashed the sidecar wheel, this cyclist tilted his outfit and rode twenty-five miles on two wheels

��COIL f_ /SPRINGS

��BUMPER EhD

��WITH eggs selling at from sixty to eighty cents a dozen and with the food shortage caused by the in- sufficient number of railway cars, the new design of shock-absorbing car device, shown in the accompany- ing illustration, should prove a boon, because it will reduce the breakage in transit and therefore re- duce the cost of the eggs. A sec- tional platform on rollers is pushed into the ordinary refrigerator freight car so that it bears up against a series of coil springs at each end of the car next to the ice chamber. The shocks that attend the coupling and uncoupling of cars are not transferred directly to the cases of eggs, but are taken up by the play of the platform against the coil springs at each end. The sectional floor is several inches above the main car floor. When the water from the ice boxes at the ends of the car over- flows, the cases are not flooded, as the water runs off under the sectional plat- form, which stands above the car floor.

���A sectional platform on rollers is pushed into the ordrnary refrigerator freight car, so that it bears against coil springs. This absorbs the shocks and obviates much breakage during transit

�� �