The New York Rapid-transit Subway

64 DISCUSSION ON NEW YORK SUBWAY. [Minutes of Ccl. Yorke, on the subject of corrugated rails, and Colonel Yorke did not propose to enter on that much-debated question. There were many theories on the subject, but as far as he knew, not one of them held the field at the present time. An ounce of fact was worth a good deal of theory, and he ventured to ask the Author, when he replied to the discussion, to say whether there had been any trouble in the New York subway due to the corrugation of rails. It was interesting to note in that connection that on the more recently constructed tubes—the Baker Street and Waterloo, the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton, and the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead lines—the trouble of corrugation had not arisen. That was somewhat remarkable, inasmuch as the wheels, the trucks, and the motors, and lie believed the whole sub-structure of the cais on those tubes, were precisely the same as on the Metropolitan District Railway, where the corrugations had been exceedingly troublesome. The method of guarding the third rail seemed to him to be an excellent way of protecting those men who, more than any other men on a railway, needed protection, namely the permanent-way men. Those men had enough troubles to guard against in watching the trains running on the rails on each side of them, and lie had always sympathized very strongly with those who now had also to pick their way among highly-charged electrical conductors. When the question of electric traction was first discussed in England, he hoped very much that some method of guarding the third rail by means of a horizontal plank, such as that shown in Fig. 18, Plate 6, would be adopted. It was similar to what was used on the Metropolitan Railway of Paris, where he first saw it. For some reason or other it had not been received with readiness by English railway-companies, difficulties seemed to be anticipated with regard to it, and tlie present mode of guarding the third rail was by means of a plank placed vertically on one side or on both sides of tlie third rail and projecting a couple of inches or so above the level of the top of that rail. He believed that one of the difficulties antici- pated with the horizontal-plank method was that, in the event of tlie collecting shoe not being kept always in accurate adjust- ment in relation to the permanent way and the third rail, it would strike the plank placed above the third rail, and would rip it up and do general mischief, and might possibly give rise to dangerous short-circuiting or other troubles. On that point also it would be very interesting to hear from the Author whether any difficulty had been experienced in New York. Tlie arrange- ments for signalling were distinctly interesting and novel, or novel so far as the absence of signalling upon the local or stopping tracks