И. А. Курбасова Е. И. Силантьева

TEXT B. ONE OF THE WAYS

TO INCREASE SPEEDS ON RAILWAYS

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(1) Railway operation under modern conditions requires frequent services and higher speeds. From the point of view of economics the operation cost of the railway service should be as low as possible. So the principal aim of the research into the new transportation systems is to design an efficient and cheap means of transport.

(2) The propellers used in aviation attracted the atten­tion of railway engineers and at one time propeller-driven vehicles were considered very promising. Some specialists believed they would find application on intercity lines.

(3) Over some years careful investigations were carried on in Germany into the possibility of designing high-speed propeller-driven railway vehicles.

(4) In 1903-1905 two motor coaches (моторный вагон) were built, each of them had an electrically-powered pro­peller. Moving on the experimental track these coaches achieved a speed of up to 130 mph. The current was col­lected from the overhead conductors (зд. контактный провод).

(5) In 1919-1920 an ordinary railway coach ran between Berlin and Hamburg attaining speeds of over 100 mph. Unlike the models developed earlier this one was driven by two propellers powered by old petrol (бензин) aero­engines.

(6) No further experiments were carried out until 1931 when "Rail Zeppelin"¹ was designed. Instead of two en­gines "Rail Zeppelin" was driven by a single aero-type en­gine with a four-bladed propeller. Both the engine and the propeller were installed in the rear of the coach. The vehicles were streamlined and were made of aluminium. Each vehicle could carry forty passengers.

(7) When put into experimental service the vehicles attained 120 mph on the Berlin — Hamburg intercity line while the average speed was 99.5 mph. However, "Rail Zeppelin" never went into commercial service but was used as a prototype for the diesel-electric "Flying Hamburger" ² train developed later on.