Abstract
A REMARKABLE opportunity is now presented to electrical and mechanical engineers of applying to eminent practical service the recent discoveries and advances made in relation to the accumulation and transmission of energy in the form of electricity. I allude to the construction and working of the Channel Tunnel Railway. Of course the direct application of steam-power to the work of boring is out of the question. The power employed in boring Mont Cenis and St. Gothard was transmitted by compressed air through metal tubes, but this is a very costly, wasteful, and in some respects inconvenient process; and this cost and waste increases in a very high ratio to the distance of transmission. Since those works were executed an immense advance has been made in the practice of transmitting energy by electric current, and particularly in storing that energy; and I predict that if the tunnel is ever completed (which I do not doubt) it will be by means of electrical agency. An eminent civil engineer, who had invented a boring-machine which he considered of great promise for that work, told me more than a year ago that Dr. Siemens assured him that he would undertake to transmit 50 per cent, of the initial power by electric current half way through the tunnel; and by this time he would most probably give a much larger percentage. An eminent French authority promises from sixteen to twenty horse-power by a, single current over a distance of from ten to fifty kilometres. If these statements are founded on fact your readers will at once realise the applicability and potency of the agent. Then there must of necessity be an immense quantity of material to be carried to and fro. The electrical railways of Berlin, Brussels, and Paris have left no question open as to the easiest and most economical means of propelling the trollies; and by using several conductors as many trolly trains in succession could be run as there would be conductors. It would be premature to discuss now the subject of working this railway, but it is certain, that electricity will be the agent, and there is very little doubt that the twenty miles of level tunnel way will be worked by energy generated and stored by the train itself in its descent from the land level to the tunnel level. An examination of this question in detail would be incompatible with your space and purpose. I will simply say that a train of 100 tons descending a gradient of 1 in 100 for five miles would start with a potential force of nearly 60,000,000 foot pounds, a very small portion of which would be expended in useful work. Let the surplus of this be applied not to destroying the rails by brakes and conversion into useless heat, but by revolving generators and storing the product to be used in again turning the generators (now motors) for propelling the train. I do not say that the train could be lifted up the five miles at the other end by this stored energy: the engineers may be intrusted with that duty.
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WALKER, E. Tele-dynamics and the Accumulation of Energy—their Application to the Channel Tunnel. Nature 25, 152 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/025152b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/025152b0
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