Trolley-Wire Electrobuses.
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Those who are responsible for the well-being of electrictramway systems are, in many parts of the country, very reluctantly coming to the conclusion that it is next to imixtssible to make paying concerns of such systems, except in districts which afford exceptional passenger-carrying possibilities, and where the installation and subsequent service conditions do not involve very large unremunerative charges.
As a matter of fact, ill only a few instances ill Great Brita'o does a careful analysis of the financial statements pertaining to tramway undertakings win rant the assumption that they can be made paying concerns. The running of trams in districts where the traffic is almost negligible for the time being, but where it is assumed that business ultimately will develop to reasonable proportions, has seriously militated rig:tins-t the success of the majority of electric-railtraction se l“ toes in this country. Pioneer work has often had to he undertaken ,n order to appease small but dissatisfied bodies of ratepayers.
In some few instances the managers of tramway systems in Great Britain have experintented with the petrol-driven onmilms, ;Ls o feeder for the main installations, but it is hardly to be expected that the self-propdled type of machine would receive much encouragement or the hands of a body in men who are trained entirely to another class of work, and who practically depend on the maintenance and extension of electric road traction for their bread arid cheese. Such men must naturally have a leaning towards the explohalion of purely electrical schemes, however anxious they are to put the undertakings, of which they are in charge, on a paying basis.
Considerable Considerable
interest ha,: been aroused amongst the owners and managers of eleetric-trantway concerns in this country by he expioitatian of a new system if electric propulsion on common roads by The Railless Electric Traction Co., Ltd., to which concern Sir nought,: Fox and Partners are conulting engineers. These last gentlemen are also consulting engineers to the London Electroinis Company, and we Nre intereted to MAC that the Railless Electric Traction Company has also made arrangements with the Electric Vehicle Company of London for the supply of omnibuses and other vehicles propelled by accumulators. It is as a possible rival to the motorbus in certain classes of passenger-carrying work that we now find it useful briefly to review the new system and some of its present applications.
Broadly speaking, the method adopted consists of the retention of a similar method of driving to that used on the ordinary electric tramway systems, and the abolition of the tram rail ; the current is conducted to and from the vehicle by duplicate trolley wires. The first practical application of railless electric trolley traction was known as the Lombard-Guerin system, and this is still in operation at various places on the Continent, notably in the outskirts of St. Mak> and at Fontainebleau. Thi: pioneer system employs a small motor-driven trolley, which actually runs on the overhead wires, ahead of the vehicle tc which it acts as a feeder, and a pair of loose cables connect: the little, self-propelled, trolley collector with the road vehicle. Certain difficulties were experienced with the in. dependent trolley motor and with the arrangements for cars to pass each other on the Lombard-Guerin system; them hindrances, it is claimed, are avoided in the new type of plant which is now being proposed by the Railless Electric Traction Company in England.
The equipment, whose application we now propose tc consider, is known as the Max Schiemann system, and thE first experimental goods service was laid down in Westphalia in 1903. The early cars were fitted with three-phase electric motors on the front wheels, and steering was effected by thc hind wheels. The current supply and the return wen( secured, in this early example as in the later equipments, 10 ?he provision of two overhead trolley wires and, on the early models, two swivel trolley poles were carried by the motor vehicle. Experiments were tried with roller trolleys, ant: afterwards with long shoes of specially soft metal, but dies( double-pole arrangements were found to present considerable difficulties with regard to the passing of cars. Wherc the traffic does not warrant the provision of a separate pair of overhead conductor wires for each of the " up " and " down " lines, the passing of vehicles in opposite directions has to be effected by the removal and replacement of the trolley contact attached to one of Ihe cars.
The success of the experimental scheme rendered the installation of other systems possible on the Continent, mid a number of other lines has been equipped since 1903. We may instance two goods lines at Veischedethal and at Wuerzen, which were opened in 1904 and 1905 respectively, and a passenger line at Lyons was inaugurated in 1905. Alitweiler to Neuenahr was the next. route to be served, and this was opened in 1906. The most recent installation is that at Mulhausen, Alsace, and this has only been completed this year.
At Mulhausen, the equipment embodies a single pair of overhead Nvires on each route, and current is collected therefrom by means of an improved, single, trolley pole which carries Iwo articulated collectors. The vehicles arc motordriven on the front steering wheels, which are fitted with rubber tires. The hind wheels are 4 feet 6 inches in diameter, and are steel-shod.
The machines, which are intended for the services about which negotiations are now proceeding in various parts of Great Britain, are to be built much on the lines of the ordinary motorbus. The omnibuses are of the single-deck type, and they have all four wheels rubber-tired; the wheel base is 33 feet and the overall length of the machine is 23 feet 6 inches. The normal height of the trolley wires from the ground is 21 feet 6 inches, and the trolley arm, which is carried on the fore part of the roof, is so constructed as to allow a latefal deviation of to feet on either side of the overhead wires. 'Where it is intended to operate lines of vehicles on this system in the streets of towns or cities, two separate pairs of overhead wires have to be installed for the " up " and " down " lines respectively, so that, altogether, a total width of 40 feet of the roadway between the kerbs is then at the disposal of these tailless machines.
In this latest type of electric omnibus the electric motor is carried on a supplementary frame, midway between the I ront and back wheels, and the drive is taken back through a univereally-jointed shaft to a differential gearbox of the Milnes-Dairaler type; this last unit is carried on a sub stantiel perch frame, which is triangular in sheet! and is built up of channel steel. The frame is pivoted, at its front end, on to a cross-member of the mein frame, by means of an eye-belt, which is mounted on rubber buffers. The final drive is of the internally-toothed rack and pinion type. A countershaft brake, which is foot-operated, is fined immediately behind the motor, and two other brakes arc carried on the final-drive pinion shafts. All the brakes are of the locomotive shoe type. The steering gear, axles, spring suspensicn end many other details are of similar type to these of the !..:411(1:trd modern patterns of three-lon motor vehicles.
The clnims which are put forward on beleib' of tbe raillees elietric vehicle are principally based on the low cost of hist:ill:Item and subsequent low operating chiirgee. No attempt is made to comhat the ordinary idecit-ic iriiliiwttv undereddree on such services as provide a sufficiency of passengers to werrent a frequent service. It is generally nceepted that a minimum .resident population et eoo,000 is the limit teem which an ordinary tramway se stem can be meth: le PbTwo examples will suffice to show the unprelitable nature of many of the electric tramway enter
iii this country. The Wie,an tramway sestem, which
hit he greatest route length, compared with the size of the population served, of any in the United leinedom, hes met with financial failure. No provision has been inode for depreciation anti yet a deficit for the year of 110,932 has to he borne. The electric tramways at Stalvbridge show a deficit of ;.e,..;8,199 for the last year's trading. H proper depreciation, at the rate of about J400 per mile of single track, had been added, the deficiency would have amounted io i14).279 for the year. The charges due to the interest and sinking fund on the cost of the overhead .or conduit equipment and of the track are the chief causes which militate against the successful financial operation of tin• standard type of electric tramway equipment.
The " railless " proposition certainly eliminetes one of these detriments. The standing expenses of an ordinary tramway, as compared with the running charges (which are taken io include interest and sinking fund on the cost of the power station and the feeder system), epproxineee -4:38o per mile of single track per annum.Asa matter of practical experience, en the above basis, it hae been accepted by electrical engineers generally, that where the surplus receipts, after deduction of the running expenses, amount to 21(1 . per tramcar mil-e---a quite reasonable estimete—a ninemimeo service is the lowest which will meet the SUInding expenses charge. It therefore appears that, under the best coedit ions, where the population will not sufficiently utilise
a nine-minute service, an electric-tramway service can seldom be made to pay under any circumstances or conditions of management. It must, also, be remembered that very many systems—particularly that of the London County Council— are maintaining services which are far in excess of the requirements.
Active negotiations are proceeding between the Railless Electric Traction Company, Limited, and the municipal authorities at Dundee, Manchester, Liverpool, Hastings, Burnley, Bolton, Sheffield, and the London County Council, and it is probable that one or more extension lines to the existing systems in some of the above towns will shortly be authorised.
We do not think we can do better, in order to enable our readers to realise the present attitude of some of the tram way authorities towards the various possible systems of sur face transit, than to extract a few paragraphs from the report of an official deputation, which recently visited cer tain towns in Germany to inspect the trackless-trolley system in operation, on behalf of the Manchester Corporation TraillWayti Committee.
Under the heading " Cost of Operation of Trackless Trolleys Compared with Motorbuses" we find the ingenuous statement that " general expenses would approximately be the snare in each case, with the exception that, in the case of the treekless trolley equipment, something might have to be INA in rates for the overhead equipment ; but in the
city this woeld really make no difference, the money simply passingfrom one pocket to the other." Cost of tire up
keep, cleaning and oiling, anti the interest and sinking fund Oil the capital outlay are considered to differ but little in the two systems. " 'The power expenses," the report states, " in the case of the trackless trolley car would about equal 'he power oasts for the internal-combustion engine," but as this charge, in the case of the trackless system, is taken to include " interest and sinking fund on the overhead equipment, maintenance expenses, and electrical energy," we should require something more than a general opinion on the part of this deputation, before we were assured that the balance under this heading was not distinctly in favour of the motorbus. Under the heading " Other Advantages of Trackless Trolleys " we read " for a suburban service, where cars only run, say, every 20 or en minutes, reliability in the running is of first importance_ If a car breaks down zind loses a journey, it makes a great gap in the service." We would venture to remark that if a tramcar of the ordinary type breaks down it is liable to hold up the whole of the service.
We may fittingly conclude with a further extract from the Manchester report, which, in its reference to the grnnting of motorbus licenses in that city, unfortunately nppears to
be not entirely unbia-sed. A section of the report is devoted to " The Field of the Motor 'Bus,– and we reprint it in full. " The only field for the motor 'bus is (a) in towns and cities, where tramways are not permitted, or (ii) in suburban districts, where the trallic is not sufficiently great to warrant the laying down of tramway rails, and in the latter districts it will have a competitor in the trackless trolley. The granting of licenses to private individuals to run motor omnibuses in the southern suburbs of Manchester is naturally a interest to the tramways department. We have, however, sufficient knowledge of the earning capacity of the proposed routes for which the 'buses have been licensed to say that the licensees intend running their 'buses all the year round— summer and winter—they will rot, in our opinion, earn sufficient to meet their expenses. it may, very possibly, he
advantageous for a corporation or a company operating a large tramway system to run motor or other omnibuses in the suburban districts to act as feeders for their undertaking, but for private individuals to undertake the running of such 'buses in these thinly-populated districts—as an independent busirwss concern—the proposition is it different one.' :1lt1iough we readily admit that there seems to be a considerable field for the exploitation of this latest development of electric traction, it must be remembered that considerable allowance must be made for the difference in costs of operation and construction in Germany and in our own country. The actual net differences between the cost of working the ordinary tramcar, the motorbus or the electric-trolley omnibus have yet to be definitely settled on a proper basis of careful comparative investigation and of practical tests here in Great Britain under home conditions. One of the principal assets of the tramcar, as compared with the motorbus, is claimed to be its large seating capacity per vehicle. There would seem however to be considerable difficulty in the adaptation for use on common roads of anything on the trackless system other than the single-deck vehicle : trailers are illegal here, The unrivalled flexibility of the service atlammed by the use of independent motorbuses, and the fact that, as the result of extensive experience and of improvement in management, the cost of upkeep and the depreciation charge have both recently been very materially reduced in the larger motor vehicle undertakings, are two facts which go far to enable us to insist that the much-maligned but eminently-popular motorbus; can, in no way, be considered to be " out of the running."