Mr. Pratt, of Worcester: When the armatures are burned out from any cause, what does it cost to renew them?

Mr. Sprague: I do not know that I am justified in answering that question; it is a commercial matter, and depends on circumstances. Your bill might be fifty dollars, more or less, and certainly would be reasonable.

Mr. Pratt: It is commonly stated that it would cost two hundred dollars.

Mr. Sprague: I will guarantee the depreciation if you will pay me so much, and observe ordinary care in the use of the machines. It makes no difference what is deranged, we will keep it in repair. The manufacture of this class of machinery enables us to take out an armature which has burned out and substitute another for it, without much loss of time. These things develop, as everything connected with electricity has developed, to more and more perfect work. We are gaining experience every day, and to know what the trouble is is more than half the battle. The motor that is built to stand four or five hundred volts and a ground circuit will be the best for either the storage battery, conduit or overhead systems. The motor that is built to meet all these varied conditions of service, the most arduous conditions as well as the lightest, must eventually be through evolution, a practical, hard-headed sort of machine.

The President: The President will say, on behalf of the Association, that we are very gratified to Mr. Sprague for his remarks and the many points and facts of interest to us all which he has brought before our attention.

REMARKS OF MR. ROBERT W. BLACKWELL ON UNDERGROUND AND OVERHEAD ELECTRIC CONSTRUCTION.

Mr. Robert W. Blackwell, of New York, of the Bentley-Knight Electric Railway Company: A year ago I had the pleasure of addressing you at the Philadelphia meeting. I spoke of a good many things then that we would do during the year to come; and we have fulfilled most of them. We were at that time about to run the road at Allegheny City, a little over a mile in conduit and about three miles overhead. We have run that road now with two cars since the middle of December. Since the middle

of February

have

we have run four cars, and for the last six weeks we six cars. That road is doing to-day, I think, the heaviest work done anywhere in the world by electric motive power.

run

Of the entire length of the road, sixty per cent. is in curves, and there is a total rise of two hundred and ninety-five feet in 4,900 feet, the steepest grade being twelve and a half per cent. We are using exceptionally powerful motors, the heaviest in the country, there being thirty nominal horse power on every car, and each pair of motors develop at times seventy-five horse power. The road, I think, is subject to the worst conditions of any road in the country. After a storm the water comes running down like a freshet through the side roads and rushes into the conduit; the mud is phenomenal, the pavement is bad, but there has never been a stoppage caused by any defect in motor mechanism or conduit construction. While the road was still in the constructor's hands a fire in the car house destroyed half of the cars, and in consequence the road was not deliverable until the early part of June. Since that time the road has been operated by the Observatory Hill Passenger Railway Company. As to expense, I would briefly say that the entire operating cost of the road, including interest upon the investment, is under sixty-five dollars per day. While I was last in Allegheny the receipts of the line were as follows:

September 23, 201; September 24, 116; September 25, $151; September 26, $153. During this period only five cars were in operation, some alterations in the power station rendering it impossible to get power for all of the six cars. The average daily mileage of each car was eighty-five miles. During the four weeks while the road was being operated by the railway company on trial preparatory to its being accepted from us as contractors, the expense and receipts for four cars (the original number ordered), was as follows:

The fact that a number of men were, during these weeks, working on the road-bed, accounts for the difference in the expense column for these weeks.

During the above period the average mileage per car per day was seventy-five miles.

During the time that we have been working on this road we have met every possible difficulty and have met it successfully. The grades and curves are, I think, greater than those anywhere yet operated by a self-propelled motor without aids to traction.

The specialty to which the Bentley- Knight Company desires to call your attention is the conduit system.

We have laid the only conduits ever worked successfully, and our desire is to introduce the conduit form of construction upon city roads. Of course we put up elevated conductors as well, and build roads partially overhead and partially conduit. We have successfuly met every difficulty from insufficient drainage, floods, mud, crossings of other roads, switches, turnouts, excessive loads and the like. I think it is fair to say that the conduit line at Allegheny City, although short, is a practical solution of the question of the adaptability of electricity to city railway service. We are now laying, as Mr. Sprague has just informed you, a threemile section for the West End Street Railway Company, of Boston. Over that conduit, a section of which we have here for your inspection, will be operated motors supplied by several companies; and upon that road, both the conduit and overhead systems will, I think, receive the best and most thorough test that has ever been made of electrics in their application to city street-railway service. These cars will be run in competition, undoubtedly, and will be forced to run against each other, both on the overhead and underground systems. The result of that trial will, I think, decide the future. There can, probably, be no more thoroughly fair and square test than that afforded by the West End Company.

The cost of conduit ranges from $15,000 to $30,000 per track mile-taking into consideration average cost of drainage and average difficulties-the smaller figure applying to our lesser and the larger to our greater cities, the difference being largely caused by the cost of providing against the strain to which the conduit will be exposed from traffic over the slot, and climatic changes.

We do not object to the overhead system wherever the municipal authorities will allow the placing of a network of suspended wires. As the cost of elevated conductors should not exceed, at

most, $3,000 per double mile of track, that system can be advantageously laid where the cost of conduit would preclude its adoption. As is now done at Allegheny City, elevated wires in the suburbs are a most effective supplement to a conduit system in the paved and sewered streets of a city. The tendency to the cheapest forms of construction where suspended wires are used, is, however, to be greatly deprecated, and much trouble and uncertainty of operation has been caused by the employment of the cheapest design, material and labor, to the general damage of electrics in the eyes of practical men.

I have not mentioned our dynamos, motors and mechanical constructions as applied to the equipment of the cars themselves. All that is good, reliable and efficient is claimed by every electric man for his own particular plant. What has been said by the other gentleman applies therefore to what my Company furnishes. We, as well as the others, have the best of everything, and in support of that statement, refer to what we are now doing and to the work laid out for us in the coming year. During the coming. winter there will be, not only in Boston, but in Allegheny, and possibly in New York, a thoroughly good, careful test of exactly how an electrical conduit system will work during the winter months; and in each place where it is to be constructed, the difficulties are such that their solution will meet the requirements of every road there is in the United States.

Mr. Wm. Richardson: Where will the conduit system be seen in New York?

Mr. Blackwell: During the last week arrangements have been entered into between the Company that has been trying to put a road through Fulton street, New York, and the opposing Company, and at last an agreement has been signed, as I understand, which places the Fulton street line in a position where it can construct half of its road from Broadway to Fulton Ferry at once. I will say that the material for that line was prepared a year ago; and we have endeavored constantly to get the matter in some position where the road could be built. We understand now that half of the line can be built before the middle of November. The cars will probably not be delivered until the month following.

In closing, I would say that there are many motors to-day offered to you by many companies, and that in selecting an electrical machine, the same care, scientific and mechanical, should

be taken as is taken in the selection of any other machine for the application of power.

Price is a poor criterion, the cheapest is rarely the best; and furthermore, the extraordinary attempts now made by the electric companies to underbid each other and get work on whatever terms, lead to all kinds of disastrous results, not only to the seller but to the buyer as well.

There is another fact that we have to meet, and that is, that while the electric motor car takes the place, not only of the present car but of the horses as well, it only gets the care that is now given to the car, and none of the care that is given to the horses. Now you cannot expect a mechanical thing to run well and successfully, unless it is well taken care of, and unless the same care and attention is given to it as is given to other machinery. Somebody must take care of all mechanical things; somebody must keep the mechanism in good and proper shape, and unless so kept up, it will be a dismal failure.

Mr. Woodworth: I should like to hear from the ThomsonHouston Company. Mr. Mansfield is here and represents that system, and a good many of us would be glad to hear from him.

REMARKS OF MR. GEORGE W. MANSFIELD ON THE
OVERHEAD ELECTRIC SYSTEM.

Mr. George W. Mansfield, of New York, of the Thomson Houston Electric Company: Mr. President and gentlemen of the Association. I know that it is rapidly approaching the hungry man's dinner hour, and I think that the merits of the Thomson-Houston system in incandescent and arc lighting, stationary motors and its new railway work, are so well appreciated and being so thoroughly recognized by all, that any lengthy remarks made here would be unnecessary. I would, however, like to state one or two facts on one or two matters which I think pertinent. First and foremost, we invite the most accurate and minute inspection of all the street-railway men at this gathering or in this country to our system. There is nothing covered up, there is nothing to be hidden, and there is no secret about it which we do not want you all to possess. We clearly recognize that to have our system adopted by street-railway men, they must first know about it, and they can only know it by thoroughly investigating and ascertaining all that it is possible to learn. For my part, I should prefer to have every street