Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 294, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 December 1914 — ERA OF ELECTRICITY NEAR [ARTICLE]

ERA OF ELECTRICITY NEAR

Locomotives of the Future Not Likely to Be Propelled as at Present, by Steam. The centenary this year of the locomotive as a freight carrier—it was in 1814 that George Stephenson’s oddlooking contrivance hauled the first loaded freight cars ever on rails —impels a look into the future, as well as a glance at the past. In one hundred years, the shaky, creaking, groaning machine which

rattled along the Kijlingworth colliery tracks at six miles an hour has grown into a monster of more than 400 tons; as long almost as the whole Stephenson train. About it has gathered a halo of romance which no other bit of machinery, unless it be a modern ocean liner or a battleship, has ever won. Men have come to love it for itself, to attribute to it human failings and virtues, to talk to it as if it were a child, while it flung Itself along the glistening rails into the night. But in the last decade a rival has gained upon it This is the age of efficiency, and it must be admitted the steam locomotive, with its cloud# of smoke, its noise, its slowness in starting and stopping, is wasteful. Electricity is supplanting it Railroads are electrifying their systems. Trolleys are competing for the short haul. It may be that within the present century electricity will supplant steam as a motive power, and the 2014 anniversary will be celebrated in museums where present-day locomotives will be pointed out as curious relics.