One

the electrification of the vast terminal system from Harrison, New Jersey, under the Hudson River, through the tunnels under Manhattan and the East River to Jamaica, Long Island. hundred electric locomotives, each of 4,000 horse power, and capable of one hundred and twenty miles an hourthe most powerful ever made-were called for in the original order. The dimensions of these locomotives are: length over all, sixty-seven feet, seven and one-quarter inches, total wheel base fifty-five feet two inches: height, top of rail to top of roof, thirteen feet one inch,. total weight one hundred and forty-five

tons.

Within the station and train shed is standing room for fully three hundred

thousand persons, or a number equal

to five armies like that of the United States forces. Engineers estimate that the accommodation will be equal to the maximum traffic of one hundred and thirteen thousand arriving and departing travelers per hour. As one statistician puts it, the entire population of the United States, Canada and Mexico could pass through its portals in a single year without inconvenience. "Were all the travelers who are to use the Pennsylvania Terminal in the course of one year," says this authority, "to form in line of procession, four abreast, the line would reach from New York to Panama, and it would require a period of three years to pass through the station, stepping at regular military pace."

S

OME time ago, when the device first appeared, an account account was given in these pages of the gyro

scopic monorailway invented and patented by Mr. Louis Brennan, of Gillingham near Chatham, Kent. The account in question dealt with the gyroscopic monorail in its model and experimental form. Since that time the inventor has been hard at work, and in November last invited a party of experts and newspaper men to a practical demonstration of a car forty feet long, ten feet broad, and weighing twenty-two tons.

The demonstration was completely successful. The car, as constructed, is capable of carrying a load of from ten to fifteen tons, and possesses four wheels, which run on a single rail, secured on sleepers. It is claimed for the invention. that it is capable of a speed of 150 miles an hour in perfect safety and without any perceptible vibration. Nothing like speed was actually attempted during the test because the length of straight track was but a quarter of a mile and the complete circle an eighth of a mile only in circumference. However, the speed

The only element of danger to the passenger is exactly the same as that which exists at present-from the explosion of the boiler of the locomotive behind which we travel to town. It was impossible, Mr. Brennan observed, in reply to a question, for the gyroscopes to stop suddenly-"it I would take them an hour to lose their balancing force." With a full load the car can mount a gradient of one in thirteen; and "if one is prepared to sacrifice. four tons of load it would run freely up a gradient of one in six."

It is understood that Mr. Brennan will construct monorail trains which are to be ⚫ run in Kashmir as a first experiment. In

a mountainous and difficult country, where an ordinary railway track could only be laid at enormous cost, the invention will be of peculiar advantage, as it can cross a ravine on a single strand of steel hawser and do many other marvelous things that no vehicle has ever done before. Mr. Brennan, it is interesting to note, holds the master patent in the invention, which is fully protected in thirteen countries and, amongst others, in Germany, where a monorail demonstration-with a machine constructed in Germany-was given before a body of experts on the nineteenth of last November.

-OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.