People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 September 1895 — A Sub-Sidewalk Kailway. [ARTICLE]

A Sub-Sidewalk Kailway.

A novel plan for a sub-sidewalk railroad, to take the place of elevated roads for rapid transit, has been designed by a Chicago inventor. The road, as its name implies, is to be built under the sidewalk of the street, the space required being only eight feet in width by eight feet in hight. At the curb line a wall Is laid from one end of the street to the other. Under the other side of the walk the curb wall is parallel with a stone foundation for posts and a fence. On this foundation and on the base of the curb wall rails are laid. Iron columns are set on the inner wall suportlng girders level with the top of the curb wall and marking the line between the sidewalk proper and the socalled area space. A wire fence connects the posts and separates the railroad from the area space. This space will be for stairways and entrances to basements. With the curb-wall, girders and bases of buildings for support, a prismatic walk is laid for the purpose of admitting light into the space below. Electricity is to be the motive power. The speed, the plan sets forth, will not be less than thirty miles an hour, and may in some cases be as high as sixty miles an hour. One of the advantages claimed for the road is that it will convert the basements of buildings into valuable property. This and other circumstancses, it is believed would ma£e the property owners readily give their consent to the construction of the road. It ought to be patent to every southern and western democrat that voting for a free silver congressman to make a free silver coinage law, and at the same time voting for a gold bug president that will veto it, is one way of settling the silver question that leaves it very much unsettled. An exchange says that one of the reasons for maintaining a navy is to protect our missionaries in foreign lands. That’s the doctrine! Cram our religion down their throats. If they dc \’t take it without kicking shoot the gizard out of ’em. What we need is a big navy to convert the heathen Isaac Glazebrook employs in his blacksmith, horseshoeing and wagon repairing shop more workmen than any other like establishment in Jasper county.