Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 December 1893 — Two Miles a Minute by Rail. [ARTICLE]

Two Miles a Minute by Rail.

Engineers are always, like the great Alexander, seeking new worlds to conquer. F. B. Behr, associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers, finds steam locomotion on the surface of this planet 100 slow at a more or less dangerous maximum of sixty miles an hour and he proposal to whirl the man of the twentieth century at the rate of two miles per minute. Under the title of “Lightning Express Railway Service” he publishes a full statement of his plans with all the necessary technical details. The motive power proposed is electricity and the method that which is known as the Lartigue single-rail system, which, in a rudimentary form, is now at work on a short line of nine miles and a half from Listowel to Ballybunion, in Ireland, and from Feurs to Panissieres, in the department of the Loire, France. There are many advantages claimed for this idea, including the absolute impossibility of a train leaving the metals, its cheapness of constrnction as well as a speed that brings Edinburgh within three hours of London. The King of the Belgians has accepted the dedication of Mr. Behr’s interesting little work. —(London Telegraph.