Cable car

“ The cable car must close its grappling iron and grip the cable before progress can be made. It must come in contact with the power. An electric lamp will swing dark and unlighted while all the other lamps about it send forth enlightening rays, and all the dynamos in the world may be revolving in the engine house, sending a surging current within a few inches of the isolated lamp, and all in vain unless it come in contact with the power. You must turn the switch and let the current flow in, and then the lamp will itself shine and will illumine its surroundings like the rest. ”

“ In most types of cableways a considerable sag is allowed in the cable supporting the car in addition to that caused by its own weight. Even in systems of practically constant cable tension, in which the wire is stretched by enormous weights, the loaded car causes a sag in the track cable, and ascends and descends an incline when approaching and leaving a tower. The aim in the compensated cableway is to overcome this sag as much as possible, and to offer a minimum of resistance to the car in its course. ”

“ The cable car that is unattached to the cable will make no progress and stand still forever, even though the engines in the power house glow with heat, and the cable, gliding along in the center of the track not two feet away, is laden down with power. ”

“ However, before she had watched the electric cars a half day Grandma went so far as to say, "If you could be sure there would be no danger from electricity and be sure of power enough I don't know why these wouldn't do just as well as the cable cars."
"Tell me about the cable cars, won't you, Grandma? What makes them go?" asked Harriet, now old enough to be interested in the difference between the systems.
"The cable makes them go," answered her grandmother. "It is an endless iron chain which the engine at the central station keeps running all the time. ”

“ The cable car was the invention of Mr. A. S. Hallidie, who organized the company which built the line. This was the first time that the application of an underground cable was ever used to move street cars, and on August 1, 1873, the first run up the Clay street hill from Kearny to Leavenworth street, was made, and by September 1st the road was in operation. It was a wonderful exhibition, and half the town was there to witness it. Many were in doubt as to the success of the enterprise. ”

“ The cable cars have for all practical purposes made San Francisco a dead level. They take no count of rise or fall, but slide equably on their appointed courses from one end to the other of a six-mile street. They turn corners almost at right angles, cross other lines, and for aught I know may run up the sides of houses. There is no visible agency of their flight, but once in awhile you shall pass a five-storied building humming with machinery that winds up an everlasting wire cable, and the initiated will tell you that here is the mechanism. ”

“ The cable-car was, in fact, originated on the hills of San Francisco.
Many streets are so steep that they have a stairway cut in the sidewalk, and in the center, the crevices between the cobblestones are green with grass. The streets are divided into those you can drive up and those you can’t. In motoring to an address ten blocks away, instead of driving there directly as in any other city in the world, you have to take a route not unlike the pattern of a wall of Troy. ”

“ As the wheel revolves, these jaws close and grip the endless cable, to which the cars are permanently attached, and thus are they raised or lowered as occasion requires. By this method there is practically no wear whatever to the cable. It is not strained and chafed by the constant operation of gripping as on the street railway cars, where the inertia of trains of cars of many tons weight has to be overcome by the gripping of the ever-moving cable. ”

“ For heavy street-car traffic and for places where there are very heavy grades the cable system has been sucessfully employed. The cable, an endless wire rope of one to 11⁄2 inches in diameter, is kept in continuous motion in a slotted groove or conduit below the surface and between the rails, and the connection with the car is made by a grip which can be controlled from the car. The power required to keep the cable in motion without load is large—35 to 75 per cent. ”

“ The solution of the mystery is an endless wire cable hidden in a box in the road-bed, and turning over a great wheel in an engine-house at the top of the hill. The foremost of the two cars is provided with a grip, or pincers, running underneath in a continuous crevice in the box with the cable. When the conductor wishes to go on he clutches with his grip the cable; when he wishes to stop he lets go and puts on a brake. ”

“ If a troupe of Elizabethan courtiers in large ruffs should board a cable car, the complication would be a very awesome one, and the profanity would be in old English, but very inspiring. However, the combination of wide-brimmed hats and crowded cable cars is tremendous in its power to cause misery to the patient New York public.
Suppose you are in a cable car, clutching for life and family a creaking strap from overhead. At your shoulder is a little dude in a very wide-brimmed straw hat with a red band. ”

“ There had been a difficulty with the expense account which necessitated travelling, not in cab which is only half as dear as automobile, but in cable-car which is awful indeed. A break-down in cable-car is quite as routine as in automobile but can never be fashionable; moreover the population misses by a shade or two the nicety of really refined gasoline.
My particular cable-car, however, was so comparatively deserted that I had quite one strap to myself till a huge gentlemen clamped hands and feet over mine and—following the custom in Chicago cable-cars—passed a word for Municipal Ownership. ”

“ The speed of the cable, which is gene rally 6 to 8 miles an hour, is thus imparted to the car gradually and without jerk. The arrangements for passing the pulleys, for changing the dummy and cars from one line to the other at the end of the road, for keeping the cable uniformly taut, and for crossings and junctions with other lines are of considerable ingenuity. When the cars are cast off from the cable they must be stopped by hand brakes, which on steep gradients especially must be of great power. ”

“ The car is carried along by being fastened to this cable. What is it you call the driver of your new cars—a motorman? The man who drives a cable car is called a gripman. It is his business to work the 'grip,' a [Pg 143] stout iron contrivance which must catch hold of the cable when the car is to be carried along and must be loosened when the car is to be stopped."
"Is San Francisco the only city where they have those cars?" asked Harriet. ”

“ Some of the minor inventions are really of too much importance to be passed without comment. The cable car is a factor which has cut no small figure in the activities of city life. The first patent on a slotted underground conduit between the rails, with traction cable inside and running on pulleys, was that to E. A. Gardner, No. 19,736, March 23, 1858. Hallidie, in San Francisco, in 1876, directed his energies to a development of this system, and brought it to a degree of perfection and general adoption that made it for many years the leading system of street car propulsion. ”

“ Cable railways, for the transmission of minerals, are in very common use all over the world. At Hong-Kong and elsewhere they do good service for the transport of human beings. The car or truck is hauled along a stout steel cable, supported at intervals on strong poles of wood or metal, by an endless rope wound off and on to a steam-driven drum at one end of the line, or motion is imparted to it by a motor, which picks up current as it goes from the cable itself and other wires with which contact is made. ”

“ The inventive boy may, of course, build a car with a hollow metal or wooden body, and weight it properly to provide the necessary load.
The motive power is provided by means of a cord, or traction cable, carried around two large grooved pulleys, mounted in supports fixed to the landing stages at each end of the cableway. They are made of wood, a suitable groove being cut around the edge with a saw, and smoothed with a small round file, or sandpaper wrapped over a round rod. The traction pulley is turned by means of a crank, set on the bolt which is used as an axle. ”

“ Buffers of all kinds have been devised to effect the stoppage of the carrier without injury thereto under the different degrees of force with which it is moved upon its way, to prevent rebounding, and to enable the carrier to be discharged with facility at the end of its route.
Among the early mechanical means of transporting the carriage was an endless cable moved continuously by an engine, and this adoption of cable principle in store service was co-eval with its adoption for running street cars. ”

“ The brake was eased, and as the Great Eastern moved ahead the machinery of the paying-out apparatus began to work, drums rolled, wheels whirled, and out spun the black line of the Cable, and dropped in a graceful curve into the sea over the stern wheel. The Cable came up with ease from the after tank, and was payed-out with the utmost regularity from the apparatus. The system of signals to and from the ship was at once in play between the electricians on board and those at Foilhummerum. ”

“ The strength of the cable was such that it would not break except under a tension of a little over three tons. The machinery was so adjusted that not more than half that strain could possibly come upon the cable, when the brakes would relax their grasp, the wheels revolve easily, and the cable run out into the sea without a jar. The paying-out machine, therefore, we are far from claiming as wholly an American invention. ”

“ But by 1890 electric traction had become practical, and the issuing of patents for cable lines ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Before the close of the century practically every important cable line in the United States had changed its motive power to electricity. Thus in a brief quarter of a century this method of street-car traction had come into existence, revolutionized all hitherto known methods, and become obsolete. ”

“ Another truck houses a complete telephone exchange, since the observers in the balloon may wish to communicate with any one of a number of batteries which they are serving. Telephone communication is established by means of an insulated wire which forms the core of the cable, while the steel cable itself acts as the return wire to complete the circuit. In some cases, a separate copper cable is employed, using the steel cable as the return half of the circuit. ”

“ After passing through such elaborate tests, all will be glad to see the final product of so much care and skill. As the long line begins to reel off from the great wheels and drums, we may examine it in its completed and more perfect form. It is only necessary to compare it with the cable laid in 1858, to show its immense superiority. A glance at the two as they appear on the preceding page will show that the cable had grown since first it was planted in the ocean, as if it were a living product of the sea. This growth had been in every part, from core to circumference. ”

“ It erred, indeed, the other way, being so heavy and powerful that it was liable to break the cable under any material strain. The degree of retardation was regulated by a hand-wheel actuating a frame-clutch surrounding the outside of a brake-wheel. The details of this machine were worked out by Messrs. C. de Bergue & Co., the manufacturers. The engineer-in-chief also furnished external guards to the propelling screws of each laying vessel to prevent a foul with the cable in the case of going “astern.” ”

“ The motive power is an underground cable, worked by large stationary engines about midway along each journey. I visited some of the engine-houses, and saw the splendid machinery, the enormous wheels round which the cable revolves, and the great engines doing their work almost silently. One objection to the cable system of cars is that if there is an accident to the machinery, or if a cable breaks, the whole of the cars on the line are stopped till the repairs are effected. ”

“ The flat cars shown in Fig. 20 were of 3 tons capacity, and could hold two tunnel segments. As the working face was down grade from the shafts, the in-bound cars were run by gravity. For out-bound cars a cable haulage system was used, consisting of double-cylinder, Lidgerwood, single friction-drum, hoisting engines (No. 32) of 6 h.p., with cylinders 5 in. in diameter and 6 in. stroke and drums 10 in. in diameter. These were handily moved from point to point, but, as there was no tail rope, several men had to be used to pull the cable back to the face. ”

“ In New York and London underground pneumatic tubes carry letters to and from the post-offices. When the central engine works its fans exhaustively, water may be drawn into the tubes from the streets so as to do much harm. When the ground is thoroughly dry it is best to exhaust the air at one end of the line and compress it at the other. This union of a push and a pull resembles Lord Kelvin’s plan in ocean telegraphy, by which a cable is first connected with the negative pole of a battery and then, for a signal, made to touch the positive pole. ”

“ They said that if the company would put a short cable on the stretch of road around the curve, there need be no more danger. They said that a gripman could stop his car or slow up on a short cable, but that with the long cable, such as the company is now using, it is impossible for the gripman to have any control of his car while rounding the curve. ”