From Our Berlin Correspondent.
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One of the immediate consequences of the German Automobile Liability Act has been the formation of an association of the owners of industrial vehicles in Berlin to safeguard their common interests.
The soul of Wiesbaden is greatly agitated by the pending concession for seven motoreabs, in addition to the 13 already working, and the authorities are being earnestly entreated not to inflict any more abominations of the kind on the city. But the authorities seem bent on defying the citizens.
I hear that the Berliner Elektromobil-Droschken Aktien-Gesellschaft, the electric cab company generally known as the " Bedag," finishes the working year with a—profit: Such a result has never before been chronicled in the company's reports. However, the shareholders get no dividend, the small profit going to reduce the big -outstanding deficit of 253,080 marks.
A " staff " car, together with five voiturettes, will shortly be added to the Berlin Fire Brigade's motor rolling stock, Captain Reichel not being satisfied with his horse-drawn vehicles, which; in the case of distant calls, often arrive toe late at the scene of the fire. These cars are to be petrol-driven. Although primarily intended for "inspection " work, they will also serve for ambulance operations. The Berlin commander is clearly a " whole-hogger " as regards mechanical propulsion for the Fire Brigade. Motor-borne Tea.
A Berlin daily credits a transportcompany with a scheme to replace the camels by self-propelled vehicles for conveying the finer Chinese teas across Central Asia. If realised, the scheme would mean a saving of 14 days. Certain tea-dealers at Kiachta, the chief receiving station for the teas brought per the camel-caravans, are said to be at the back of the project. It is doubtless only a question of connecting up Kiachta with Irkutsk, a station on the TransSiberian railway ; they are not very far from each other—but the roads!
Berlin's First Sell-propelled "Tower-wagon."
Berlin has long possessed an electrictramway system characterised by extensiveness and excellence of organisation, but it has remained for the Berlin Corporation, a mere tyro in the working of street-ears, to introduce the self-propelled tower-wagon for repairing the overhead feeding cables.
Messrs. Siemens and Schuckert are responsible for the chassis, and the ideas it incorporates were the subject of a description, with favourable comment, by one of your Editorial staff on the occasion of his visit to the last Berlin Motor Show, where a similar chassis was an exhibit. The battery, hung under the driver's seat in such a way as to be easily replaced by a fresh one, feeds a single electrometer, completely protected against dust and spring mounted.
The German Industrial Trial.
In accordance with programme, the German Industrial Trials finished up with an exhibition at Stuttgart, whither the vehicles still competing up to the date of the last summary had steered on the morning of the 12th instant, having come from Karlsruhe, 165.8 and 102 kilometres distant for • the lighter and heavier categories respectively. On the Monday, the 10th of May, when the Strasburg-Freiburg stage was successfully negotiated, the distances were 165.5 and 115.5 kilometres. The 11th instant saw the penultimate stage, Freiburg-Karlsruhe, 185.7 and 139.7 kilometres, completed. In Baden and Wurtemberg, by the way, the conception of " industrial trials " as engendered in the official as well as the popular mind, bordered, in its ignorance, on the ludicrous. The populace, indeed, who are not subscribers to trade organs and were, therefore, somewhat in the dark respecting the objects of the run, might be excused for expecting a " race " ; but what must one think of the Freiburg policeman who, acting under orders from his superiors, went about jingling a huge bell and giving notice of an approaching " motor race through the town," and adding to this fancy notion an injunction that children be kept strictly within doors on the portentous occasion? In the latter case, the official information was particularly crass, since the vehicles did not go through Freiburg at all, but simply skirted the town.
On the 14th instant, at Stuttgart, the Executive Committee held a special sitting to deal with several protests, amongst them one by a
South German firm against the Swiss representative for starting up with light petrol engines fed by a heavier grade, also a counter-protest against inaccurate time-taking by an observer. The counter-protest was disallowed, but the protest awaits judgment. At the same meeting, the Executive Committee decided to cancel all penal marks incurred through defective trailers: a very just resolution too, the main purpose of the trials being to test the qualities of the self-propelled unit. Owing to the number of points raised, the determination of the final results was referred to Berlin.