Mr. Monks: We use the supplemental wire between the tracks joining it to each rail, and making a connection with the rail.

Mr. Lang: Have you experienced any difficulty with the telephone companies?

Mr. Monks: No, sir.

Mr. Lang: And does the city permit the overhead wires of all kinds to be constructed in the city, telephone, telegraph and elec tric railway wires?

Mr. Monks: There has been a general tendency in Boston, as elsewhere, to have the wires placed under ground. With that in view the conduit was laid in the first place; but the conduit proved so impractical and the overhead wire at the same time proved so practical, that the citizens of Boston were anxious, even eager, to have us go ahead with the overhead system. In connection with this, it may not be out of place to state that we are setting up poles on Tremont street down in the heart of the city, and that it is crowded all day and late in the evening with footpassengers and teams. We are now engaged in putting up our poles in that locality. We use an iron pole in three sections. I confess that when the poles were about to be placed there, we had some misgivings concerning the possibility of erecting them, and one of our officers called in person upon the owners of property on the street. He was received everywhere with great courtesy and kindness, and it gives me great pleasure to say that not one man owning property on the street made any objection to having a pole placed in front of his store.

Mr. Lang: I would ask whether this line you speak of was laid with special reference to the use of electricity, or whether it was an old line?

Mr. Monks: In that connection let me say that our horse boxcars weigh about fifty-five hundred pounds and our electric motor cars about twelve thousand. We have been running with boxcars on that line for many years; we have a very large amount of stringer flat rail construction, which is amply good for the operation of horse cars for a number of years to come; but for the operation of electric cars it is clearly not sufficient, and we are now engaged in laying the very best possible construction we can find for the purpose of the proper operation of electric cars. Mr. Wm. Richardson: What construction is it?

Mr. Monks I would prefer not to advertise any private con

cern.

Mr. Wm. Richardson: I referred rather to the weight of the rail, and how it was laid-whether with yellow pine stringers. It is with a view to finding out whether it is necessary for a road now in existence, and well constructed, to be reconstructed for the use of electricity that I ask the question.

Mr. Monks I think it will be necessary to reconstruct almost every horse road on which it is proposed to use electric motors. Mr. Wm. Richardson: Do you design the rail with the joints. regular or irregular ?

Mr. Monks: We propose to make it with joints meeting. We determined that to be the better way of the two.

Mr. Wm. Richardson: What is the weight of the rail?

Mr. Monks: We use a seventy-eight pound Johnson rail on chairs, and a sixty-six pound Johnson rail on chairs; we also use some Providence girder rail.

Mr. Cleminshaw: Can you tell us why you make the joints meet?

Mr. Monks: We think it avoids the possibility of a rolling motion which, I understand from steam railroad engineers, has been the effect when the joints have not been laid opposite each other. If the rails are laid, so that the joints do not come opposite each other, there comes after awhile a sort of rolling sideways motion, first on one side, then on the other; but when we keep the joints directly opposite, the two will fall together, and there will be only a motion up and down in the cars. I looked the thing over very carefully, and that is what we determined.

Mr. Wm. Richardson: Is there any reason to suppose that what are called "live" wires will be attended with fatal results when persons come in contact with them?

Mr. Monks I think it is pretty generally understood in Boston that the pressure of current in our wire is not dangerous to life. As you know, in all electric roads we use a five hundred volt current, and in many of the arc lighting systems a three thousand volt current is used. Mr. Edison says, I believe, that a current of eight hundred to one thousand volts is dangerous to life. I have never heard of any serious injury resulting from contact with a wire carrying five hundred volts.

Mr. Lang: Do you protect this wire by other wires strung overhead?

Mr. Monks: You mean guard wires?

Mr. Lang: Yes, sir.

Mr. Monks: That is our intention down town in the central part of the city.

Mr. Frank E. Petit, of Augusta: I would like to ask the gentleman what rate of speed is attained in the business portion of the city?

Mr. Monks: I cannot tell you that, by reason of the fact that our line is not as yet running through the business portion of the city; but I think we shall not be able to run faster than six miles an hour, on account of the fact that for some time to come we shall be obliged, in the business portion of the city, to run partly by horse power, the horse and electric lines occupying the same track.

Mr. Petit: We had some experience in rails. What would be your opinion of using a thirty-pound steel T rail ?

Mr. Monks I think it would not be advisable. I should rather use a fifty-four pound rail.

Mr. Thomas W. Stevens, of Long Island City: I move you that a committee of seven be appointed by the Chair to nominate officers for the ensuing term.

The President: We will come to that after awhile.

Mr. Eppley I would like to ask one more question, and that is whether there is anybody here representing a road in Scranton, Pa.

The President: I do not know.

Mr. Eppley I heard, on very good authority, that an accident occurred within six weeks in Scranton something like this: There was a motor crossing the steam railway track. It seems the motor got off the track, and the engineer put on the full electrical power in the excitement, and by some means or other the electrical fluid connected with the steam railway rail. At that moment there was a horse and buggy crossing the track, and the horse stepped on the rail, and it was thrown down, and the buggy turned over. I am told the lawyers are head over heels in law law about the case. This was told me on good authority, and the gentleman promised to send me a newspaper, containing a full account of it, which he has not yet done.

Mr. Cleminshaw: We have with us a gentleman, whose company has just joined the Association, Dr. Allen, of Davenport, who has been running an electrical road for a year, and I suggest that he tell us his experience.

REMARKS OF DR. W. L. ALLEN ON THE DAVENPORT

ELECTRIC RAILWAY.

Dr. W. L. Allen, of Davenport: Mr. President and gentlemen, My experience has only been with a small road, operating five cars; and in many respects, perhaps, it will not show up very well, compared with many of the larger roads which, I suppose, are represented here and which are run by electricity. For some reason or other, the gentlemen do not seem to be disposed to tell all they know about it; or else they do not care to show the difference between their earnings now and what they were before. Perhaps they have not been running long enough to give us the result of their experience to a degree which shall be valuable as data for others to work upon. With our five-car road we have kept a very strict account. Most of the gentlemen who have spoken have seemed to think that the motors would burn out and be destroyed. Now we have run with these five motor cars for some time, and have run four cars steadily since August 14th, a year ago. At that time we were laid up five days on account of lightning burning out one of our armatures in the station. Since then we have kept account of all the repairs, and of all the commutators, gears and all electrical apparatus needed in repairs; a good deal of which was made in Davenport by one of our local manufacturing companies, so that we could get these things quite conveniently.

Our repairs have been on the five cars for renewals (the ordinary repairs have been included with the operating expenses), such as commutators and gears for these five cars, sixteen hundred and eighty-six dollars in twelve months to September 1st. Our operating expenses have increased a trifle less than four hundred dollars; that is to say, our operating expenses before were ten thousand eight hundred dollars with horse cars, and they have been eleven thousand two hundred dollars with these five electric cars. On that road we have a grade of seven and a half per cent We run three blocks in the centre of the city, having twenty-five

thousand inhabitants. Of course we run slowly there, as we get our load in these three blocks. We ascend this grade of seven and one-half per cent., which is sixteen hundred feet long. Our running time has been increased in this way: we ran fifteenminute cars before; we run twelve minute cars now, and on busy days run at intervals of ten minutes. We can make the trip in twenty minutes out and twenty minutes back; two miles and a quarter each way. The earnings have increased very largely. They would not make very much of a figure compared with some of these other roads, but the increase has been very nearly fifty per cent. The actual gross earnings have been twenty-three thousand dollars as against fifteen thousand dollars before. The operating expenses have somewhat increased; also the taxes and insurance. Our repairs were all considered in the operating expenses, but the renewals were sixteen hundred and eighty dollars. We have had nothing to pay for armatures; we bought four Field magnets that cost about twenty dollars apiece. In our experience, most of the wear has been with the commutators. The brushes rub on this part, and they wear out rapidly. In June last we put on carbon brushes, and the wear and loss has almost been done away with. We have cut down, in a great measure, most of the wear. One man attends to the inotors, and he works on the commutators; and if some of the wires get loose on the armatures, this man has been able to patch them up himself. Perhaps the cars make a good deal of noise, because we are using cast-iron gear, but the people do not complain; in fact, they did complain that the motors made too little noise at the start, and that they ran into buggies and pedestrians. The system is satisfactory to us and the people to such an extent, that we have built another road, but eighteen miles from here, at Stillwater. There the grade is from nine to ten per cent. on six blocks on one line and four blocks on another.

Mr. Eppley What system do you use?

Dr. Allen: The Sprague.

Mr. Cleminshaw: With what percentage of increase in expenses could you double the number of cars you operate; in other words, you are now running five cars; could you run ten cars?

Dr. Allen: We could run ten cars without increasing much the cost of moving the cars. We would have to put in another