Canal Trolleys

First Announcement of the System to Be Used.

NIAGARA’S POWER APPLIED

Towage Cars Run on Wires Above the Boats.

TESLA’S MOTOR EMPLOYED

The New Plan Is Expected to Rejuvenate the Old Erie Canal.

HOW THE CABLEWAY WILL WORK

Vice President Hawley of the Cataract General Electric Company, Which Holds the Canal Rights, and George W. Balch of the Canal Committee of the Produce Exchange Believe in the Plan.

Those who ought to know assert that a day of rejuvenation is at hand for the Erie Canal. The Legislature has passed the bill and the Governor has approved it submitting to the people of the State the question of appropriating $9,000,000 for canal improvement, and the long looked for motor, suitable for electric towing, has been found.

The possibilities in the way of electric towage of canalboats were recognized very soon after it had been decided to utilize the tremendous force of Niagara’s falling waters through the medium of the mystic current that is so rapidly assuming complete dominance in the mechanical world.

For years New York’s peerless artificial waterway had been in a state of decay. From the proud place of chief commercial artery between the East and the West, which it held in its earliest years, it had fallen to the level of things which are considered behind the times. Behind the times it was and is, for it is to-day practically as it was when the work of construction had just been finished. A portion of the big ditch has been widened and deepened and its physical condition has been somewhat improved, but its boats are propelled to-day as they were three-quarters of a century ago. Save in a few instances the patient mule and the castoff farm horse are now, as then, the motive power. All the rest of the world has been keeping lively step to the tune of modern progress, but the canal has stood still, and is now away behind the procession — so far behind, indeed, that more than once its abandonment has been seriously proposed.

That its abandonment was not decided upon long ago is, perhaps, the most magnificent tribute to the wisdom of the canal’s projectors and builders that could possibly be imagined. All the inventive skill that genius could command, all the power that money could wield — these have been devoted for a full half century to the perfection of the railroads to the point of successfully competing with the canal in the matter of low freight charges.

Some years ago when it was feared that the steam giant’s scalding breath would soon dry up the waters of the Erie canal, the latter was made free to any who chose to navigate it, the State assuming the entire burden of maintenance and repairs. Then large money prizes were offered by the commonwealth for the best steam towing device, and hundreds of inventors puzzled their brains with new plans for canal navigation.

None of those presented, however, was deemed worthy of consideration and the canal went on in its old sleepy way. Meanwhile, year by year the railroads were increasing the weight and power of their engines, the capacity of their freight cars and the smoothness and solidity of their roadbeds. The steam giant has been getting ready to work cheaply, and to-day he can haul freight for one-third as much as he could in 1850 and at a much more rapid rate than it can be floated upon the bosom of the canal.

Some twenty years ago it was believed the problem of the Erie’s salvation had been solved when it was proposed to lay a cable in the canal’s bottom along which the boats should work their way by means of a sort of grip, operating under water, but the scheme failed utterly. Since then there has been virtually no progress. It is true that a percentage of boats are now operated by steam propellers, but the percentage is small.

EARLY EXPERIMENTS IN TOWING.

It is about two years ago that the world began to hear of experiments in canal towing. Further investigations along similar lines, the direction of Mr. Frank W. Hawley. Mr. Hawley was early identified with the schemes for turning Niagara’s waters loose upon a lot of dynamos, and it was he who first fully grasped the idea of using the electric current so produced for the rejuvenation of the canal.

His first notion was to make use of some sort of trolley, conveying the electric current to the boat from an overhead wire to a motor placed in the craft, the motor to be applied to the shaft of a propeller wheel, as is the engine of a steamboat. Although there were inherent and perfectly obvious defects in that method of canal propulsion, the experiments which he conducted were attended with results that seemed fully to justify further investigations along similar lines. It had already been made apparent, not only that Niagara might, could be, electrically harnessed, but that the resultant current could be economically transmitted over long distances, and there was no apparent reason, in view of the progress made in other lines of electrical development, why, once so transmitted, it should not be set to hauling canalboats.

It was shortly after this that the State of New York made the contract with the Cataract General Electric Company, of which Mr. Hawley is vice president, granting to the company, in consideration of a guaranteed low rate of compensation to be required, the perpetual and exclusive right to the use of both banks of the canal for the stringing of wires and conductors over which to transmit electricity for light, heat and power purposes. The plan of propulsion, however, had yet to be devised, and every energy was bent to its discovery because, although it could not be used until after the great power plant at Niagara had been installed and the problem of long distance transmission of the current without great loss had been solved, it was considered highly desirable that electric towage should not lag behind these achievements for the sole reason that the motor was not ready.

No one not conversant with electricity in its practical application can well understand the difficulties that were encountered, nor is it necessary to go into them here. It is enough to say that they were very great, and that hundreds and thousands of plans were submitted and many of them tested without satisfactory results.

HOW THE PROBLEM WAS SOLVED.

All this while the problem over which so many ingenious men were worrying o’ nights, was being unconsciously solved by a man who had a problem of his own to grapple with. This man’s name is Lamb, and he is a son of the brave soldier who commanded Fort Fisher on a certain memorable day in the course of the civil war. Young Mr. Lamb has a big timber tract somewhere in North Carolina.

Now, lumbering in the South has to be conducted upon an entirely different plan from that adopted by lumbermen in the North. In Maine, Michigan, Minnesota or any other State where the winter is a season of heavy snow, the timber is cut in the winter and hauled over the snow to the water course down which it is to be floated to market. But in the South, where there is no snow to speak of, the moving of the timber after it has been cut is a much more serious matter, and very soon after he had gone into the lumber cutting business Mr. Lamb began a series of experiments for the discovery of some better way of doing the work.

Among other schemes with which he experimented was a wooden railway, over which a light steam locomotive traveled, but that necessitated cars on which to haul the logs and other expensive accessories, and was found in many ways unsuitable. At last it occurred to him that the work might be done electrically, and the device which he hit upon for the purpose was both simple and effective, besides being amazingly cheap. No cars or track or other expensive accessories were required. All that was found needful was a double line of steel cable, strung a few feet above the ground, and attached either to posts or the trunks of standing trees; a comparatively inexpensive dynamo, a steam engine to operate it and a light traveling motor of a few horse power.

When this was installed and set to work it was found possible to haul great logs as far as it was desired, without the slightest difficulty or hitch, and at an expense that seemed trifling compared to the expense necessary to move the logs by other means. The device had been in practical operation in Mr. Lamb’s timber tracts for some time when he heard of the search being made for an electric towing scheme by the Niagara General Electric Company, and it then occurred to him that his “cableway,” as he termed it, might be the very thing for electrical towage on the canal.

HOW THE CABLEWAY WORKS.

So the cableway was brought to the attention of Mr. Hawley and the other gentlemen connected with the project for rejuvenating the canal. At first they looked upon the plan with some doubt, but the experiments that have been conducted for their benefit have been so successful that the cableway may now be considered practically adopted, though it cannot be put into operation until it has received the final approval of the State Superintendent of Public Works and the representation of the commercial bodies in interest along the line of the canal.

The cableway, as it is proposed to use it on the canal, is practically the same as that used in the North Carolina pineries, and may briefly be described as follows:

A line of steel posts, 14 feet high and 150 feet apart, is firmly set along the bank of the canal. These posts carry two steel cables, the upper one being an inch and a half in diameter and the lower one an inch. A motor car is suspended from the upper cable, which bears the entire weight of the car. The motor is connected directly with the driving shaft, around which the lower cable is twice passed, in such a way that movement in either direction by the motor moves the car accordingly. The motor is run absolutely under the control of the motorman, who sits in the seat, as shown in the cut, and is handled with the same facility as the motor of a trolley surface car. The tow line of the boat to be moved is attached to the “Sampson post,” the same as in mule towing, and thence carried to the motor car.

The current for the propulsion of the motor will be supplied from the dynamo through the upper cable, returning to the dynamo through the lower one; thus a complete metallic circuit will be formed, and a more perfect one than is attained on most lines of trolley railroads, on many of which, indeed, the return is by a ground circuit.

A peculiarity of this motor lies in the fact that it is the only device that depends in nowise upon its weight for traction power, and it can, therefore, be built in the lightest possible fashion. In actual practice a 7-horse power motor, amply powerful for the towing of one or two heavily loaded boats, need weigh no more than seventy pounds, though this will not probably include the weight of the seat, the framing, etc.

As motors can be run backward and forward with equal facility, it will be perfectly feasible to operate the canal by the cableway system with only one line of cable. These posts carry two steel cables, the upper one being an inch and a half in diameter and the lower one an inch. A motor car is suspended from the upper cable, which bears the entire weight of the car. The motor is connected directly with the driving shaft, around which the lower cable is twice passed, in such a way that movement in either direction by the motor poles, though this is not contemplated in case the plan works as well as it is expected to do. With one line only, a boat would be hauled by one motor until another boat going in the opposite direction were met, when there would be a change of motors and boats, each motor turning back on its course, towing the boat that had been hauled by the other motor.

According to the terms of the contract between the State and the company, the price charged for towing must be very small, much less, in fact, than the work can be done by either steam or animal power. In addition to the saving that will be effected in the cost of towing, there will be a gain of room in each boat, for it will no longer be necessary to give up any space to horses or mules and their forage, to engines and fuel, or for the sleeping quarters of drivers or engineers. The very material lessening of the actual cost of canal navigation that will thus be brought about will undoubtedly lower freights below the possibility of railroad competition and insure a continuance of the canal’s life as an artery of commerce.

A novel feature of canal operation by this method will lie in the telephone system to be made a part of the operating plant, by which it will be possible to keep every one along the line posted as to the location and cargo of every boat afloat. It is part of the general scheme, indeed, to furnish the New York Produce Exchange and every other commercial body in interest with a full report of the facts daily. It thus will be possible to intercept a boat anywhere on the canal at any time.

In speaking of the cableway yesterday, C. P. Vedder, general manager of the Cataract Electric Company, said that as soon as it has been shown beyond peradventure by actual practical tests over considerable distances that Nikola Tesla’s method of insulation would insure the transmission of electricity over long distances without disastrous waste, an experimental cableway will be erected along several miles of the canal in the vicinity of Niagara Falls. It is believed that the tests of the insulation will be completed in a few weeks now, and as there are no misgivings as to the results, Mr. Vedder is confident that a section of the canal will be operated by the cableway during the coming summer, or in the fall at latest.

It is understood that the Tesla motors will be used in the cableway motor cars.

The cableway has already had several satisfactory tests at Trenton, N. J. This was several months ago, when an experimental stretch of some three miles of cable was strung and an old canalboat hauled back and forth with the greatest ease. On one occasion an old time canalboat driver was put upon the seat of the motor car, with instructions as to how he should manipulate the lever. Like most men of his class, he was extremely skeptical, but when the motor car moved in response to his touch, and with the motor car the boat, he threw up his hands with the exclamation:

“Goodby, mules! Goodby, mules! It goes, by gosh!”

Mr. George W. Balch of the Canal Committee of the Produce Exchange expressed himself yesterday as very much in favor of the entire scheme of canal improvement. It is probable, if the proposition to expend $9,000,000 in that way, which has been passed by the Legislature and signed by the Governor, in accordance with the action of the Constitutional Convention of last year, is adopted by the people next year, that the plan which has been suggested by ex-State Engineer Horatio Seymour will be carried out. In brief, this plan is to “bottom out” the canal some two feet and raise the banks and existing structures some two feet more, or four feet in all. This will give a clean depth everywhere except on the aqueducts and on the sills, of nine feet, and will increase the carrying capacity of the canal immensely, while at the same time it will lessen the cost per ton. Mr. Balch believes it will restore the canal to its old place as a carrier of freight to interior points in the State, since the practical rates will be very much lower than can possibly be furnished by any other medium.