Baron Munchausen Goes Into Engineering.
The company has been chartered and styled the Consolidated Re
volving Platform Company, and have the plans of the new project
on exhibition at their offices. The financial backers are local capi
talists, and work will be begun as soon as the weather will per
mit. •
The idea which led to the development of the scheme was
suggested by seeing a man jump on a railway train, run over a
few cars and again alight on the ground. The question naturally
arose: How do we calculate the energy, positive or negative, the
train has given to him, or he has given to the train? This was
readily solved. From records the average daily passenger traffic
of the Bellefonte Central was found and used in computing the
available energy. The energy will, of course, increase with the
number of persons jumping on and off the train, and taking this
average traffic, the energy developed was found to be nearly equal
to the immense power running to waste at Niagara Falls.
All the stations along the lines will be equipped with large cir
cular platforms, which revolve, as will be shown later on, and
the trains on approaching the depot will not stop as heretofore,
but slow down to about five miles an hour. The passengers will
alight on the platforms and walk to the centre, gradually losing
their kinetic energy and giving up the momentum received by
them from the train, thus giving a force to the platform tending
to revolve it on its centre. On reaching the centre of the plat
form the momentum of each passenger will be reduced to zero.
From here they will find their way by a spiral staircase up to a
bridge and thence to the street.
At the college station two platforms 500 feet in diameter will
be used, one to receive passengers from the trains and the other
to load them on. The platforms will be built of steel and revolve
on frictionless roller bearings. From the centres of these plat
forms will be built the spiral staircase by which the passengers
will go up to a bridge spanning the platform, and walk to either
end and there be lowered by elevators of the style used at Ander
ton on the river Weaver, in Cheshire. The bridge will be a Howe