A gasoline-electric railroad train was introduced in Germany in 1913. It comprises a power car and ten other cars, each of a five-ton capacity, which trail along behind. The power car carries two gasoline engines of a hundred and twenty-five horse-power each which drive a dynamo installed in the center. The current is transmitted to the electric motors, actuating each of the wheels of the power car and the trailers. The General Electric Company has perfected a similar car for use on the suburban branches of street railroads in this country. Most of them are equipped with a two hundred horse-power gasoline engine directly connected to a dynamo from which power is generated and transmitted to the motors, which are located on the car axles. Cars of this type can be made of a larger seating capacity than is customary and can easily attain a speed of a mile a minute.

Gasoline engines offer great advantages over steam because of the absence of boilers, coal and ashes, and a much higher efficiency is obtainable, a consumption of one pint of gasoline per horse-power hour being good practice for well-designed motor engines and a total efficiency of from ten to thirty-five per cent of the energy in the fuel being available, as against one to twenty per cent for steam averages. The utilization of the gasoline engine to generate electric power for surface cars, in instances where it is not practical to transmit energy from power stations, presents wonderful possibilities.

A Suburban Railway Car of the Gasoline-Electric Type.