| The following description of the day's
activities, is from a newspaper cutting that Thomas Parker
pasted into his newspaper cuttings book. I assume it was taken
from one of the Birmingham newspapers. Important Trial in Birmingham
Yesterday the Directors of the Birmingham
Tramways Company afforded to the Public Works Committee of the
Corporation, and to a number of eminent men who are interested
in electrical engineering, an opportunity of witnessing the
trial of an electric tramcar of the type recently produced by
Mr. Thomas Parker (Elwell-Parker and Company Limited), of
Wolverhampton, in conjunction with Mr. Alfred Dickinson,
M.I.C.E., the consulting mechanical engineer of the company. The
car in question is the same, which has been the subject of one
or two previous trials lately noticed in our columns.
Yesterday it was run from Station Street to
the Sparkbrook Depot and back with a full load of passengers,
and in the course of the journey ascended the long and severe
incline of Bradford Street, a feat the like of which, the
engineers allege has never been performed by any self-contained
tramcar.
The company which assisted at the trial
included the Mayor of Birmingham (Alderman Barrow), Sir Saul
Samuel (Agent General for New South Wales), Sir Daniel Cooper,
G.C.M.G., Sir R. Fowler, Bart., M.P., Sir Henry C. Mance, C.I.E.,
Sir Douglas Fox, M.I.C.E., Adlerman Powell Williams, M.P., Mr.
J. Spencer Balfour, M.P., Mr. T.P. O’Connor, M.P., Colonal
Twynam (Chairman of the Birmingham and Midlands Tramway
Company), Alderman Johnson (solicitor to the Central Tramways
Company); Councillors Lawley Parker (Chairman), J.J. Smith, and
Granger (members of the Public Works Committee); Mr. W.R. Highes
(City Treasurer), Mr. Farndale (Chief Constable), Mr. T. Arnall
(from the Borough Surveyor’s Office); Messrs. Martyn J. Smith,
William Neale, and W.J. Carruthers Waine, Assoc. Inst. C.E.
(directors of the company); Messrs. Joseph Ash, James Balfour,
J. Irving Courtenay, L.M. Bronsson, G. Dibley, Francis Fox,
J.E.H. Gordon, D.S. Hasluck (Chairman of the Birmingham and
Aston Tramways Company), F. King, F.H. Lloyd (Wednesbury), H.G.
Wright, W. Wiley, and E.B. Tonks; a number of journalists, and
the following officials of the Central Tramways Company: Mr. J.
Kincaid, engineer; Mr. W. Holmden, secretary; Mr. Alfred
Dickinson, consulting mechanical engineer; Mr. C. Harvey
Herring, traffic manager; Mr. R.H. Dickinson, locomotive
superintendent.
The party was too large to travel by the
electric car alone, since it carries no more than 50 persons,
and a steam-driven car of the ordinary pattern proceeded it
during the trip, to carry the surplus passengers.
The trial was regarded as eminently
satisfactory. It is true that the ascent of Bradford Street was
accomplished at a rate of only four miles an hour, and that
steam-driven cars make it a little more quickly. The engineer’s
state, however, that the gearing is designed for journeys on the
level route in Bristol Road, that the experiment of yesterday
was meant only to demonstrate a possibility in electric
propulsion hitherto doubted, and that by merely altering the
gearing, the pace might have been increased.
The car ran very smoothly, and with less
noise than even the cable system makes, except when the brake is
applied. This latter has been imperfectly adjusted, and gave
forth a jarring sound; but as it is a common mechanical
contrivance, it may be easily set right. A slight hiss proceeded
from the motor when it was at work, but was not audible to the
inside passengers. The car was driven by Mr. R. Dickinson, and
its journey was watched with much interest by curious crowds,
who were kept in order by a special force of policemen stationed
along the route.
The car may now be more fully described
than has hitherto been possible. It has much the appearance of
the cars on the New Inns route, for one sees no sign of the
machinery which propels it.
There is no rack and lever on the driver’s
platform at each end, and, as the mechanism by which the
switches are actuated is contained in a small box beneath the
steps which lead to the roof, the platforms are smaller, and the
car, though but 10” longer than a cable car (26ft.) has seats
for six more passengers.
The electric motor is carried on the front
bogey, within a frame, distinct from that which bears the weight
of the car, and not subject, therefore to the fluctuations of
that weight which take place in the course of traffic. The
effect of this immunity from depression and elevation, and of a
further bit of ingenious adjustment, is that the “pitch-line” is
constant in all circumstances, and that helical gearing, which
is safer and stronger than the chain gearing formerly suggested,
can be used to connect the motor with the four wheels of the
bogey. In this adjustment, and in the helical gearing, the real
novelty of the car may be said to lie, and much of the credit of
it is due to Mr. Dickinson.
It need hardly be nowadays explained that a
self-contained electric car, is a car in which the driving force
is stored in accumulators or batteries, which have been charged
by steam power at a fixed station from such a dynamo as those
which are now to be seen at Bingley Hall. The so-called
“charging” consists simply in this – that the electric energy
generated by the dynamo spends itself in working a chemical
change in the constituents of the battery. The change is of a
nature which tends to undo itself as soon as opportunity is
given, and this reversal of the process gives out again the
electric energy which the dynamo passed to the battery.
There is some waste in both processes, but
Mr. Thomas Parker affirms that the net result in energy is 70
percent of that generated by the stationary engine, which drives
the charging dynamo. The economical results of using electricity
as a motive power are, if this be true, remarkable. It takes
15lb. of coke, at 24s. per ton, to run a steam engine and car a
mile, and it will take 3lb. or 4lb. of slack coal, at 8s. a ton,
to propel an electric car the same distance. These are
theoretical figures, and it will be remarked that the chairman
of the company, in speaking to his guests, made a prudent and
considerable allowance upon them.
The accumulators, twelve for each car, are
carried beneath the seats, and are put in and taken out from the
outside, being shut off from view by sliding doors. They make an
automatic connection with the motor. Their present form is not
likely to be long retained, for they are enclosed in boxes of
unnecessary weight and cumbersomeness, made up of teak and lead.
Glass or vulcanite would be preferred if manufacturers could be
induced to make the kind of box required. Even as it is however,
a set of exhausted motors can be replaced in three minutes with
a set of newly charged ones, and their disadvantage consists
mainly in the fact that they add very largely to the burden
which has to be carried.
A car without its compliment of passengers
weighs 9 tons, and with it 12 tons. One charge is sufficient to
propel a loaded car 60 miles; but in practice no charge is
allowed to get exhausted. The accumulators undergo some wear and
tear, but it is said to be doubtful if their maintenance will
cost more than that of steam engines.
It is likely that two or three months will
yet elapse before the Bristol Road route is furnished with
electric cars, even if the Public Works Committee and the City
Council should presently give their sanction for the new system.
Mr. Joseph Smith states that if the order for twelve cars were
given at once, it could not be executed in less than two
months.
The Public Works Committee on their part,
still hold to the requirement that the tramways company should
demonstrate the trustworthiness of the Elwell-Parker motor by
running a car with it for a month. With reference to this
proposal, the company’s engineers point out that in order to
comply with it, they must perforce put down the plant, which, in
any case, will be needed at the generative station. The station
as designed by them, will be furnished with large engines, and
with the most modern appliances for handling the accumulators.
It will probably be suggested, therefore,
that the Council should be asked to grant to the company
provisional running powers for a month, and only to make them
absolute if at the end of that time electric traction should
become a proved success. If this concession were granted, the
hands of the directors would be materially strengthened. They
can hardly be surprised however, at the firmness of the
committee when they remember that at least one other local
authority has been induced to sanction a system of electric
traction which belies the hopes of its promoters, and that the
Central Company itself not long ago pressed hard for the
adoption in Birmingham of a motor, which is now admitted to have
had grave mechanical defects.
It was doubted, moreover, by a mechanical
specialist who saw the tramcar which made yesterday’s trial
trip, whether the brake attachment in use would prove of
permanent value. If Messrs. Elwell, Parker, and the company’s
motor does not establish its claim to be safe and efficient, its
success will be attributable to the combination in one inventor
of both mechanical and electrical skill, and to his regards for
a consulting engineer’s knowledge of the actual requirements of
tramway work.
After the trial a luncheon was held at the
Queen’s Hotel, at which Mr. Joseph Smith presided. The health of
“The Queen” having been drunk, Mr. Smith proposed the toast of
“Success to the system of electric traction.” He said that among
the buried treasures of wisdom in the east, he believed there
was a maxim that he who shot at the sun would strike higher than
a bush. He hoped that that maxim would not encourage the
Corporation of Birmingham to strike too high or too hard, if he
acknowledged that the result of that day’s experience in
electric traction was in no small degree due to the absolute
determination of the Corporation of Birmingham in general, and
of the Public Works Committee in particular, that nothing less
than the best illustration of electric traction would be good
enough for the City of Birmingham. (Hear, Hear).
Mr. Lawley Parker had that day seen a
distinct advance upon anything which had before been shown in
this country or on the continent of Europe. The improvement in
mechanical details in the car upon which they had travelled was
most marked and most satisfactory, and so far as the car itself
was concerned, he ventured to state that it would give
satisfaction both to the Corporation and to the travelling
public. As to the commercial aspect of the experiment, which was
interesting to the shareholders of the Central Tramway Company,
it was one of the features of electric propulsion, and of the
self-contained car in particular, that power must be lost at the
fixed station in changing mechanical energy by dynamos into
electric energy in the accumulators, and in again that electric
energy into mechanical energy in the car motor.
Taking the average of opinions which had
been given to him from the highest sources, it appeared that
probably 40 percent would be placed as mechanical energy upon
the wheels; but he preferred to calculate the cost upon the
supposition that they would only preserve 25 percent of the
original energy, and with that loss electric traction
emphatically justified itself as the coming power of the near
future. He was speaking in the presence of men who would be able
to check him when he said that one ton of ordinary coal consumed
at the generative station, meant as much efficient work as three
tons of coal expended in a steam locomotive. More than that, the
cost of hard coke was nearly three times the cost of the coal
which the company would use, and thus the cost of generation at
a fixed station was only one sixth; possibly less than that; of
the cost of steam locomotives. What cared he, therefore, as a
tramway man, if he got only 25 percent of the power generated,
when he could generate six times as much for the same
expenditure of money, representing a 20 percent profit upon
their expenditure upon electric trams? Working expenses would be
less and the wear and tear upon the roads would be less.
The average weight of a steam locomotive
and car is 16 tons, the weight of an electric car is only 9
tons. The economic results of electricity were of course still
better than those of horse traction, and at the same time the
electric car was only 26ft. long whereas a steam engine and its
car were 51ft. 6in. long (Hear, Hear). He would call upon nobody
to respond to the toast, because on that showing he thought that
electric traction was able to answer for itself (Laughter and
applause).
Councillor Lawley Parker proposed the toast
of “The Visitors” and said that the occasion was a very
interesting one to the members of the Corporation and to the
public. They had witnessed a most successful and interesting
experiment. Birmingham had not been afraid to venture upon
several important experiments connected with tramways, and now
they saw another experiment which he believed, and hoped, would
prove to be practical on other tramlines in the borough.
He desired, however, that they should first
see the electric car at work continuously for, say, a month. It
was the desire of the Public Works Committee that that should be
required in order that they might see the system thoroughly and
fairly tried. As they did not know much about electricity
themselves, they were bound to consider that the proof of the
pudding lay in the eating, (Hear, Hear) and if the month’s work
was satisfactory, he was sure that the City Council and the
Public Works Committee would be very much disposed to favour
electric motors on other lines in the borough (Hear, Hear).
It was of course unfortunate that when the
Bristol Road line was completed the company would not at once be
able to put electric motors at work; but he hoped that they
would be able to make some temporary arrangements for a service
of horse cars. As to the use of electric motors on other lines,
it was not for him to say what the company should do; but if he
might express a hope, it was that they would boldly attack their
depreciation fund, and write off their steam engines pretty
rapidly. They might depend upon the Council dealing fairly and
properly with their shareholders. (Hear, Hear).
Sir Saul Samuel responded on behalf of the
visitors and said that his interest was the greater in the
experiment which had just been tried, because the people of
Sydney, whom he represented, were extremely anxious to get rid
of their steam cars, which were the same pattern as the
Birmingham cars. (Laughter). The trial had been a perfectly
successful one, and he regarded the system as the best form of
electric traction yet devised. He ended by giving the toast of
“The Mayor and Corporation of Birmingham”. (Applause).
The Mayor responded, and said that he hoped
the Corporation would soon be able to get rid of the smoky
engines, which now traversed the streets of the City. (Hear,
Hear). Birmingham was smoky enough without having smoke emitted
in its thoroughfares. The electric car was an immense
improvement on the system of steam traction, and, for the sake
of the promoters, as well as of the public, he hoped it might
prove a success. He concluded with some remarks on the
importance of penny fares as a great advantage to the working
classes, and by proposing the health of the chairman.
Mr. Joseph Smith, in replying, welcomed the
proposal that electricity should be used on other routes than
Bristol Road, and said that if he had not been satisfied that
the enhanced profit of electric traction would pay for the
abolition of steam engines, he would never have advocated it.
(Hear, Hear).
The proceedings closed when the health of
Mr. Thomas Parker had also been drunk. |
