THEBOYNTON BICYCLE RAILWAY SYSTEM.
THE
The thirty pound bicycle has safely carried ten times its weight. A man has in one day propelled himself and his machinefive hundred and fifteen miles. The principle of the bicycle, saving enormously in weight and friction, is here presented for application to existing and to future steam and electric roads without change of gauge or interference with existing trains.
Turn a plank up edge-wise and it will carry many-fold greater load than it would flat-wise: so by constructing two-story cars, about four feet wide and fourteen feet deep, greatly increased strength and lightness may be secured.
The cellular construction of the bamboo makes it extremely light and yet strong; so it is with the Bicycle car, constructed with veneer and steel, and composed of eighteen separate compartments corresponding to the cells of the bamboo.
It is the aim of this invention to reduce the undulations and friction of a car in motion, thereby largely increasing safety and speed, and saving wear and tear on both rolling stock and track.
Engines are now required to drive from four to eight wheels held in line back of the cylinders. On rounding curves the framing is strained by friction and wedging, entailing a large loss of power. The wheels, rails, and carsthroughout suffer proportionately from grinding and shearing. The Bicycle engine, with its double-flanged wheels, follows any curve with a small loss of power.
One or more driving-wheels running on a single rail is the simplest of all means of transportation; so manifest is it that the U. S. Patent Examiner, in charge of the railroad department, writing to the Hon. E. M. Boynton, the inventor, calls it “a practical solution of the problem of increased rate of speed—simple, inexpensive, practical.”
A driving-wheel six feet in diameter can doubtless be made to run a Bicycle locomotive one hundred to one hundred and twenty miles an hour with short stroke engines, and double the number of revolutions they now make, its speed being limited only by friction and air pressure. Ninety miles an hour, however, would probably for the present satisfy all reasonable wants for express trains, and a proportionately lower rate of speed for local and freight trains.
The overhead guiding beam is set inward, on curves, tipping the train toward the center of the curve, thus counteracting the centrifugal force, like a bicycle.
Practice has demonstrated that the twenty-two ton Bicycle locomotive is so truly balanced, that when running on a tangent, the upper horizontal bearing-wheels seldom touch the overhead guide beam, an inch space being left between them; and it is found that even when running on curves, at high rates of speed, as the train is made to lean inward to balance the centrifugal force, the friction of the overhead or guiding-wheels is but trifling.
TheEngineering Newsof March 2, 1889, says:
“That the motion of a train running on a single rail in this manner might be very much smoother and safer, seems to us reasonable, or at least a chance worth thorough investigation. It is a wholly different matter from narrowing the gauge. So long as the reliance for stability is on the support of a pair of rails (the center of gravity falling between them), all narrowing of gauge must be a disadvantage; and as it is impossible to maintain a pair of rails exactly horizontal, there must inevitably be a jerking of the train from side to side, which, at high speed, becomes exceedingly dangerous; because, whenever the level is not perfect, there is a tendency created to lateral impact against one rail or the other. In bicycle motion all this tendency is eliminated. There is nothing but the forward motion to maintain perpendicularity in the vehicles (except when the top guard-rail comes by accident into action), nor is anything more needed. Hence there is only the vertical irregularities of the rail to be taken into account; and even if they should cause considerable bouncing at points, it is directly up and down, without tendency to cause lateral motion, the center of gravity being directly over the point of support tending, unaided, to stay there.[1]Taking into account this great potential advantage and the smaller cross-section of the train, it appears reasonable that a much higher rate of speed may be safely maintained than is either possible or safe with double-rail vehicles.”
A Bicycle car and its structure.Cross Section of Bicycle Structure and Bicycle Electric Car.
Cross Section of Bicycle Structure and Bicycle Electric Car.
Cross Section of Bicycle Structure and Bicycle Electric Car.
Comparing weight to work done, about one ton of train weight is now required to convey a passenger,and the average freight train, empty, weighs more than the paying freight carried by it; whereas it is practicable for the Bicycle trains to be made to carry more than five times their own weight without five-fold loss of wasteful friction, thus affecting a saving of at least ten-fold in freight, and twenty-fold on passenger trains. The Bicycle cars already built, seat 108 passengers, and weigh complete only five tons.