http://www.hows.org.uk/personal/rail/wwr/atmos.htm
http://www.epsomandewellhistoryexplorer.org.uk/AtmosphericRailway.html
http://www.devonheritage.org/stentiford/Issue_17/AtmosphericRailway/3May2art2.htm
http://brunel.hmswarrior.org/resources/atmospheric_railway.pdf
Don’t forget the Beech Pneumatic Railway in New York City in 1869.
Meanwhile in London
1863
http://www.londonreconnections.com/2015/londons-lost-pneumatic-railway-the-worlds-2nd-oldest-underground/ Although intended to transport mail it did carry passengers in demonstration runs.
1864
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Palace_pneumatic_railway
http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2014/10/crystal-palace-pneumatic-railway-lost-tunnels-urban-legends/
The past; And the future?
The French tried the pneumatic railway system at just about the same time, and gave it up for pretty much the same reasons. Those pesky, ravenous rats!
The Beech subway was featured in a National Geographic article several years ago. I don’t remember if it’s opened for tours on occasion, but the photographs in NatGeo showed one elaborate station, the tilework was just gorgeous!
There is a very good, long article on the Web about the history of early ‘rapid transit’ in New York that covers the Beach proposal (and the machinations by A.T.Stewart, who had extended his store’s storage via technically-illegal ‘vaults’ under Broadway where the Beach tubes would run) - I had the URL on my old computer, which has died, and I can’t find it now. Something else of note are the systems designed for quick-build of a couple of the elevated railroad structures, which can be compared even now to things like the Chinese ‘bridge-launching’ systems for HSR construction. Mike will find it…
A very valid point about this, or any other, vacuum system is that it would handle only a pathetic fraction of the clientele that used, say, one of the elevated trains in New York. There is very little use for a long system that has only one shuttling car or train in service ‘backward and forward’ through the stations; the Els could routinely operate trains just a few hundred feet apart when necessary either with steam or electric power.
Pneumatics live though, I went to a home improvement show about two months ago and there was an outfit there demonstrating a pneumatically-powered home elevator system. Looked pretty good and it was an interesting demontration.
However that’s as far as our interest went. Don’t need one. At least not yet.
From Illistrated Description of the Broadway Undeground Pneumatic Railway 1870
Note separate tube each direction. Trains starting on two minute intervals.
“CARRYING CAPACITY OF THE 'PNEUMATIC RAILROAD. " We have,” says Frank Ledie’» Newspaper, " made a little calculation on this point, and find that with two tubes such as that already erected, but perhaps a trifle larger, and with trains starting every two minutes, the company could carry from ten to fifteen thousand passengers per hour from Harlem River to the South Ferry, and probably double that number, should it ever become necessary. At a compara tively moderate rate of speed, the time occupied in traveling the whole distance would not exceed twenty minutes."
“HOW THE CARS STOP AT WAY-STATIONS Another of our views shows the interior of a smai passenger way-station, and illustrates the method о stopping and starting the trains. The tunnel, as i approaches the station, is enlarged, so that air niaj pass the cars, the speed of which is diminished b; the application of brakes. The cars are brought t< a halt within the station, and remain standing upor a slight down-grade, while the air current from on< branch of the tunnel continues on through the statior into the other branch of the tunnel. On releasin« the brakes, the force of the air impinging against th< rear car, assisted by the grade, gently starts th< train forward into the mouth of the tunnel, where il receives the full force of the air-current, and is driven onward to the next station.”
Found on Google Books
But,as with some of the explanations of Hyperloop, and some of Angus Sinclair’s sarcastic comments on steam flow in cranks’ patent drawings, the ‘explanation’ does not work so well when scaled up.
Ignore the issues with building a practical ‘aeolor’ that combines both instantaneous pressure rise far down the tunnel with appropriate mass flow – even at the 0.6psi differential supposedly effective for the test prototype. Note that the bypass system only works if all the cars operate precisely in sync, and all dwell the same time in stations … but the only ‘wind’ downstream of a car moving in a tube is the displaced pressure ahead of it, and this is highly relative to the motion of the car ahead of it. What is likely to develop is a great deal of knocking and stalling, exacerbated when there is any great loss of vacuum/compression sealing at the tube walls.
Now consider the fun if a practical length train, instead of single cars, is used, but the driving power is still proportional to the ‘piston area’ at one end.
Now calculate the practical acceleration rate for cars starting at any significant distance down the tube…
There are reasons this system didn’t, if you’ll pardon the pun, go much of anywhere.
On the other hand, I still think there was somewhat more promise in the original Boynton Bicycle idea, turning any standard-gauge track into a full bidirectional right-of-way (with double-deck stack cars and stations but keeping the track available for conventional alternative use… and yes, you could have used Micheline-style self-centering rubber tires with it). Works reasonably well, as long as there are no significant curves…
Excerpt from “Alfred Ely Beach And His Wonderful Pneumatic Underground Railway” by Robert Daley
As the Civil War ended, all of New York City was wedged into the lower third of Manhattan Island. The city was compact, teeming, jammed with more than 700,000 people. Thousands more poured in every day as immigrants and refugees. The streets were clogged with horse-drawn vehicles and traffic moved an inch at a time. Public transportation consisted of overloaded streetcars and omnibuses dragged along by ponderous six-horse teams. Axles broke, horses shied, harnesses became snarled, and competing drivers got into fist fights. Silks and broadcloths were ruined in the crush inside the cars. Watches and breastpins vanished into the hands of pickpockets. The air was poisonous; it was said that a healthy person could not ride a dozen blocks without a headache. Traffic was so dense that it might take an hour to move a few yards. “Modern martyrdom,” one critic summed it up, “may be succinctly defined as riding in a New York omnibus.”</