Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/906

 Railways That Run Under Water

Visit the fishes in their homes as you travel on the Aquarium Circuit

��/\ S tunneling is costly and often very /A difficult, the idea of running rail- way cars upon the bottom of a waterway has its attractions. Air is more easily supplied to the passengers of an under-water car trip lasting, say, one hour than for submarine boats. But the bottom of water is rarely so smooth or firm that rails can be laid on it. In most cases a vast amount of grading and ballasting would have to be done be- fore the ends of the rails could be joined. The under-water car, full of air as it is, would naturally be lighter than water and its buoyancy would cause an upward pull on the rails, which must be shaped ac- cordingly and anchored down securely. Then, in water with ship traffic on the surface, some precautions would have to be taken to prevent ships with deep draft from cutting the submarine car from above, with disastrous results. These and other difficulties have made the counter-attractions of a good ferry seem more powerful for practical trans- portation purposes, and the submarine car so far finds its existence limited to amusement enterprises, where it may combine entertainment with instruction.

All that is wanted for this purpose is an airtight car which can be hauled under or partly under the water in an artificial pond by means of a cable. Through the windows the passengers can observe realistic imitations of submarine life and scenery staged in the pond. If the movements of the car are made to suggest the roughness of an ocean bed the illu- sion is improved.

One of the first schemes of this kind was hatched by Alexander Davidson - of Joliet, 111., far from the ocean.

In.stead of hauling his car with an end- less cable, as shown in the illustration, Davidson suggests that the car could simply be allowed to run into the water by gravity and could be hauled back by a cable attached to it, as indeed would be necessary whenever, as in the case of a river or a large lake being utilized, a continuous cable is impracticable.

��Charles B. Stahl of Philadelphia dis- covered that a little more illusion than the Davidson car provides would be desirable, and he fancied that it helps in this respect to shape the car as a sub- marine boat, a whale, a sea-serpent or a fish, but his main idea is to supply a track which rises and drops, so that the car will appear to dive one or more times to the bottom of the body of water. With this in view he builds his track as tv/o parallel rails secured to a trestle of varying height, and the track rails are engaged from belov/ as well as from above by little wheels journaled in brackets supporting the car at its sides. The claim set forth in his patent is limited entirely to this feature.

More illusion and still more illusion is the cry of the amusement resorts, and so it is found that the submarine "amuse- ment apparatus" devised by Jacob Gun- zendorfer of San Francisco responds to this demand with some new features "to simulate the actual sensations, scenes and experiences met in traveling in a sub- marine boat." He dispenses with the car effect in favor of the undulating and swaying motions of a boat, the track being made wavy and tipping laterally in places for this purpose. His means for holding on to the track are similar to Stahl's, and also his traction cable which pulls the car over a continuous circuit of inclosures filled with water or water marvels. But his car is never entirely submerged. The "conning tower," where the gripman is located, and some air pipes project above the water-line for the sake of safety and simplicity. As the passengers enter by a hatch which is afterwards closed above them by folding doors, they see :; thing but the ceiling when looking up, and their illusion does not suffer.

The genius of Gunzendorfer comes out strongest in that he can get along with very little water. As he explains: "The trackway first passes into a tank a little distance beyond the elevated loading platform" where the start is made; "the

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