Article July 26, 1900 Issue

Projectile Trains

Astonishing Rapid Transit Scheme to be Tried.

Boston Herald

Five hours from New York to Chicago. That is what the American Railway Company officials say they can do with passenger, mail, and express traffic. Two hundred miles an hour. That is what they claim for their new transit scheme. Pointed compartment cars—the shape of a naval projectile—will, they say, soon make it possible to whiz from the Atlantic to the Pacific in a single day. And all this with absolute safety and comfort to the travelling public.

Electricity will be the motor power, and the single car trains will be operated by one man at the handle of a gearless motor in the point of the vehicle. The cars will be built of aluminum, and will hold fifty persons. They will travel on a single rail, elevated structure, and can be run a minute apart.

Noise will be almost eliminated, and the nuisance of burned out fuses and flashes of electric flame in the cars will be unknown, as little power will be concentrated. Instead, generating sub-power houses will be scattered over the line at a distance of one hundred miles from each other. The cars will not stop, nor even slow up at these points. The higher the speed the less the strain will be, for the new cars will be operated. On the bicycle principle, with ball bearing wheels and all the weight in the centre.

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