Culled from Contemporaries.
Page 18
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A Selected Collection of Extracts from the British and Foreign Press.
Trunk-Protective Trucks.
In Jersey City an innovation is the iatroduction of large motor trucks in the baggage service. The trucks are about the size of a three-horse wagon and are so built that when being loaded, the floor of a truck is on a level with and flush against that of a baggage car, which makes work easier.
Many hard knocks are in this way saved to every trunk handled in this way through the Jersey City station. In moving a trunk from the car to the truck, it receives about the same handling it would get in being shifted about inside the same car. This is but one of the trunk-protective features of the truck,—.Voter Age, Chicago.
The Mo'bus and the 'Lectrobus.
A mo'bus and a 'lectrobus Collided in the Strand ;
They groaned like anything to see The gees on every hand. if only they would go away," They said, "it would be grand.
The buses " tootled " angrily At horses every one ; They'd got no business to be there After their day was done.
" It's very mean of them," they said, "'l'o stay and spoil the fun.•• "If we could run without a stop Or breakdown for a year, Do you suppose," the mo'bus said,
"That they would still be here?" "I doubt it," said the 'lectrobus,
And shed a hit of gear.
" A few repairs," the mo'hus said, " Are what I chiefly need."
'' A mainsail," said the 'lectrnbus, " Would much improve my speed : We're nearly ready, Public dear, And then we will proceed." —Reginald Rigby in The Story Teller.
Mutual Diversion.
[Mr. Herbert Gladstone thinks the 'authorities ought to have power to divert inotor-omnibuses.J
Shall we divert the fearsome motorbus? We loathe its sickening penetrating odou rs,
We loathe it that it will not wait for us, We loathe its banging as of big breechloaders, We loathe it till we mount the step, and lo!
We urge the driver on to "let her go.
We view with wrath the huge obstructive dray, The upraised arm, official and officious, We long to surge ahead and fly away, Although the moment may not be propitious.
We long to frame souse drastic penal code For every other thing upon the road.
Landed once more upon the firmer ground, We view its antics with delighted laughter ; The sweating driver whirls a handle round To make it start, and nothing happens after.
Why should we not divert the motorbus, Which has in many ways diverted us? in The Evening A7 CWS London, The Much-maligned Motorbus.
A party of singers recently used an omnibus as a dressing-room. As waitingrooms they have long been known to exasperated passengers. A jury has just declared that the motor. omnibus is a nuisance. That is the sort of name you give them when you are not compelled by circumstances to use them. —Indian Motor News.
Retrogressive Councils.
lhe mutur-onniihus is a vehicle which has not exactly made itself beloved by the householder, but we question whether the borough councils at their meeting last week did not advise a retrograde course with regard to it. They recommended that its speed within the four-mile circle should be limited to eight miles an hour and to ten miles without the circle. In the central portions of London this would mean a reduction of 50 per cent. in point of speed, with the result that there would be a general reduction in the pace of all traffic and increased congestion of the streets.
Such restrictions would be vigorously resisted by the vast numbers of Londoners who use the motor omnibus. When we note the storm of protests evoked by the withdrawal of motor omnibuses on two routes in London and the substitution for them of horse-drawn omnibuses, travelling at the rate of about eight miles an hour, we realise that the councils are like Mrs. Partington with her mop, and are striving to keep back the tide of progress. Quick locomotion is an immense boon, if it carries with it certain obvious disadvantages.—Llaily Mail, London.
Le "Policeman" de Londres.
Paris has received and has feted the members of the Road Congress who assembled there from all the great nations of the world in order to consider means for the improvement of the highways and for their adaptation to the requirements of modern locomotion, . . . When the subject of the traffic of the great cities is in question, one's thoughts are naturally carried immediately to London, which hnasts the largest population of any city in the world. The highway's of the English capital possess an air of exemplary tidiness, and they are cleansed all day long ; the traffic is regulated with much more method than in Paris ; blockages are relatively rare and they are always of short duration in spite of the extraordinary density of the traffic. It is necessary to except, however, the City itself ; traffic is there of a density unknown elsewhere and, at certain hours of the day, it becomes impossible for a pedestrian to cross the crowded thoroughfares near the Bank. Vehicles follow each other without interruption, and the municipal authorities have found it necessary to establish, in agreement with the tube railway companies, an underground subway at this place. Everybody uses this passage in order to avoid the extremely dangerous crossing of the street above. Only the little orderly boys and the messenger lads dodge in between the endless ranks of vehicles, which a policeman, with a gesture like that of a bishop in the act of bestowing a blessing, stops or sends forward with an ease which is unknown to Parisians—Translated from Ta Vie Automobile. Paris. A Threatened Sport.
The Local Government Board has i sued a circular condemning motor-otiiibus racing. A vigorous pretest from sport men is expected.—Punch.
Underground to Anywhere.
People are grumbling about the tin wasted on the underground tubes of Lo dots. I have a great respect for the su terranean methods of communicant wherewith we are provided, but I am E ways tempted to smile when I read tl placards announcing that such-and-ste a place is only so many minutes fro such-and-such another place. The trays ling is right enough, but the waiting f the lift to start, the irritation caused 1 seeing the train go out just as you a landed on the platform, and the lo; walks and stair-climbing, which appe to be inseparable from the journey, do good deal to make the tubes less of a ben fit than they otherwise might be. Sow times in desperation I get out and wa down the stairs ; sometimes I calcuk with justice that it will be a good de quicker for me if I take a bus irtstead resorting to the rail. Perhaps all ti will be remedied in time, but at press the delays are calculated to excite p: judices against a most useful institution. T. Macdonald Rendle, in London Opinic Horse Deals and Car Sales.
In the field of the commercial vehic as in the field of. the automobile sevei years ago, one runs up against ti old reiteration about the dependab
ness and reliability of the horse. 1 one is in revolt because he can't ha a horse-car from Haarlem to the Batte But when he is called upon to think the problem of carting between freig depots and his warehouse, suddenly 1 whole nature rises up in a seeming overwhelming recollection of the tr: and true virtues of the horse. Under su conditions this horse talk suggests aim, a fetich worship of the creature. . .
To-day, were the builders of machint to attempt the manufacture and sale machinery on the basis upon whi horses are sold in the market, the inch tries of the civilised world would be stn gered. Buying a horse, no dealer assure you that the animal will be al: the next morning. He will not guaran: that as you drive the animal home he not calk himself and be maimed for Ii He may get his foot over a halter str and strangle to death in a night. T wind may blow off his blanket and pm monia may carry him to the bonevard. may choke to death on a feed of oats, may get his head into a grain bin a founder himself. . . .
In point of capacity, the best horse tl ever lived is absolutely unreliable vel compared to the commercial vehicle, the reason that the machine as a mat of course is put to work where the ho cannot be thought of. Every vital org in the horse is hidden under sensate hi, flesh and bone; the machine may opened wide to its minutest parts. Wt and broken and diseased parts of horse may be incurable and always irreplaceable ; an hour in the shrib m restore the damaged machine to its fore perfection.-The Commereial 17 ehicic. N York.