Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 9, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 March 1888 — An Electric Pilot. [ARTICLE]

An Electric Pilot.

An Austrian engineer has designed a truck to run before every railway train, being maintained at a fixed, adjustable distance by the force of an electric current, transmitted along the rails from a dynamo on the engine. The current is conducted through mercury contained in glass tube.s on the pilot truck. If the truck comes into collision the tubes are broken and the contact destroyed. The interruption of the current instantly and automatically apfilies the brakes on the following train, t is claimed by the inventor that two expresses fitted with this system might with impunity be set to run full tilt at each other. The collision of their pilot trucks would arrest the progress of both trains before they could meet.