The Electric Railway #262823

Ever since the beginning of history this interchange Of merchan dise has been one Of the great vocations of mankind. Until about the beginning of the nineteenth century the traffic on land was handled exclusively by animal power. As the result of experiments made by a number of investigators in the first portion of the last century, mechanical means of transportation were made available. The motive power thus invented was the steam engine, which was developed into the prototype Of its modern form when Stephenson's Rocket was built in 1829. The results attained as the outcome Of this invention were far reaching; it entirely revolutionized all methods Of transportation. The problems involved in railway service are many and varied. Although transportation is one of the earliest activities of man kind, the modern railroad really had its beginning with the use Of steam as a motive power, in the early part of the nineteenth century. From humble beginnings, it soon developed along two radically different lines: the main-line or trunk railroad, and the street railway or tramway. The Trunk Line railroad.-this is usually considered to be a line of considerable length, handling traffic in large units and at moderate or high speeds. In most cases the trunk railway has been built to meet the demand for a transfer of commodities from point of production to point of consumption, and inciden tally to handle the passenger traffic originating in its territory. Such a road is one connecting a number of cities of large size, and handling all classes of freight and passenger service. On this type of railway the freight business is usually of greater importance than the passenger, the latter Often being handled merely as a necessary incident to operation.