A Russian electric'engineer named HiPpolyte Romanoff has invented a monorailway of some merit. The invention consists of a monorail hanging car as shown here. The rails are sup ported by T-shaped columns, the carriages be ing suspended in the air and propelled by wheels running along the rails. These wheels are without flanges, which Romanoff asserts retard speed by clinging to the rails while rounding curves, but are prevented from leaving the rails by means of smaller wheels which grip the rails horizontally.
An electric feed-wire runs parallel with the rail. The cars have three supports each. If the first is broken the second comes into play automatically, and then the third. Should any one of the cars be stopped by an accident or for any reason other than the natural one of Pausing at a station, all the cars behind would stop also, thus preventing any rear-end colli sions.
In May 1907, with a gyroscope monorail car Mr. Louis Brennan, C. B., the inventor of the Brennan torpedo used by the British govern ment, demonstrated before the Royal Society of Great Britain that he had discovered a prac tical application of the gyroscope.
The invention is, briefly, a system by which a vehicle or a train of vehicles supported by a single row of wheels may travel on a single rail and maintain perfect equilibrium in motion regardless of the distribution of the load, wind pressure, etc. Automatic stability mechanism carried by the vehicle itself endows it with this power. The mechanism consists essentially
of two flywheels• rotated directly by electric motors in opposite directions at a very high ve locity and mounted so that Their action can he utilized. These flywheels are mounted on high class bearings and are placed in exhausted cases, so that both air and journal friction is reduced to a minimum, and consequently the power required to keep them in rapid motion is very small. The stored up energy in the fly wheels when revolving at full speed is so great and the friction so small that if the driv ing current is cut off altogether they will run at sufficient velocity to impart stability to the vehicle for several hours, while it will take from two to three days before they come to rest. The model car, while running on a curved monorail, leans and so automatically balances the effect of centrifugal force, while a single wire hawser stretched across a river or ravine is all that is necessary in the shape of a bridge.
In 1909 Froelich, a German, developed an other type of gyroscopic car with a so-called 'precession motor," which did not pass beyond the experimental stage, and about two years later the Schilowsky system was brought out in which the gyroscopic principle is also em ployed. Consult Journal of the Franklin In stitute (Vols. CLXIX and CLXXIV) and files of the Scientific American, the Engineer and Engineering (London).