“Still two miles of straight track between A and B. On the track a long platform car, reaching from A to within a quarter of a mile of B. We will now discard ordinary locomotives and adopt as our motive power a series of compact magnetic engines, distributed underneath the platform car all along its length.”
“I don’t understand those magnetic engines.”
“Well, each of them consists of a great iron horseshoe, rendered alternately a magnet and not a magnet by an intermittent current of electricity from a battery, this current in its turn regulated by clockwork. When the horseshoe is in the circuit, it is a magnet, and it pulls its clapper toward it with enormous power. When it is out of the circuit, the next second, it is not a magnet, and it lets the clapper go. The clapper, oscillating to and fro, imparts a rotatory motion to a fly-wheel, which transmits it to the drivers on the rails. Such are our motors. They are no novelty, for trial has proved them practicable.
“With a magnetic engine for every truck of wheels, we can reasonably expect to move our immense car, and to drive it along at a speed, say, of a mile a minute.
“The forward end, having but a quarter of a mile to go, will reach B in fifteen seconds. We will call this platform car number I. On top of number I are laid rails on which another platform car, number II, a quarter of a mile shorter than number I, is moved in precisely the same way. Number II, in its turn, is surmounted by number III, moving independently of the tiers beneath, and a quarter of a mile shorter than number II. Number II is a mile and a half long; number III a mile and a quarter. Above, on successive levels, are number IV, a mile long; number V, three quarters of a mile; number VI, half a mile; number VII, a quarter of a mile, and number VIII, a short passenger-car on top of all.
“Each car moves upon the car beneath it, independently of all the others, at the rate of a mile a minute. Each car has its own magnetic engines. Well, the train being drawn up with the latter end of each car resting against a lofty bumping-post at A, Tom Furnace, the gentlemanly conductor, and Jean-Marie Rivarol, engineer, mount by a long ladder to the exalted number VIII. The complicated mechanism is set in motion. What happens?