Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 June 1898 — BOATS DRAWN BY MOTORS. [ARTICLE]

BOATS DRAWN BY MOTORS.

Electric Power to Supersede Horses on a French Canal. With the exception of the Erie canal experiments nothing has been done in this country as regards the electric haulage of canal boats, but in France there are perhaps as many as half a dozen different systems in actual operation, some of them hauling over 1,000,000 tons a year. If electric power is superior to horses for street cars, why is it not recognized as superior to animal traction for the heavier work of hauling canal boats. The system described here is now being Installed on the Aire and Deule canal. The method is peculiar in that what might be termed an electric horse is used to draw a trsn of loaded boats, the power being derived from an overhead trolley. This electric horse is in reality a form of independent electric motor carriage which travels on ordinary paths or roads dispensing with rails. An eigfat-horse-'power motor is all that is required, thus being geared to large driving wheels. These wheels are of iron, with aloe fiber rims, which gives the whole a certain elasticity and increases the adhesian. The electric locomotive is steered by the front wheels by the motorman in the cab, through a series of bevel gears. The electric horse weighs about two tons and can draw' a load of 387 long tons at a speed of about a mile &d a half per hour.

Another system by the same inventors, which is also to be used on this same canal, consists of an adjustable propeller and rudder, which may be attached to any canal boat, thus transbrat. The propeller consists of a motor hermetically sealed to its armature shaft, passing out through the casing and carrying at its extremity a threeblade propeller screw, which makes 300 revolutions per minute. The ordinary rudder is removed and the propeller attached in a very few' minutes. By this method a speed quite equal to that attained by the electric horse is reached, but a slightly greater power consumption. The current will be supplied from power stations at each end of the line at a pressure of 500 volts nt the boats. These two systems are lower in operating expense and maintenance than any of the other electric systems. Over fifty boats a day are to be hauled;rand the yearly tonnage at present is estimated at over 3,000*000. After charging off 6% per cent, for depreciation the investment will yield a fair rate of interest. So for one more service the horse is fast being displaced by electric power.—Philadelphia Record.