Locomotives have been powered by steam, diesel oil, electricity, and jet and rocket engines. But in 1844 Isabard Brunel, the great British inventor, built a ____1____ that was driven by air. His plan was to pull a locomotive along a ____2____ between the tracks.
The lead coach was attached to the 15-inch-diameter pipe by means of a piston arm. He put huge ____3____ engines every three miles along the track. These engines extracted air from the pipe in front of the train, and the pressure behind the piston forced it along.
Brune ____4____ an experimental section of pipe on the South Devon Railway. But the copper and leather pipe valves corroded in the salty air and were chewed away by rats. Seventeen years later another British inventor ____5____ a system in which the whole train was blown and sucked along a tube. But the idea of huge tubes crisscrossing the county was unrealistic.
In 1870, trains driven by air went ____6____. That year a 312-foot-long model subway opened in New York beneath lower Broadway. Its 22-seat cars were driven like ____7____. The cars were pushed by a blast of air. But in 1880, electric trains seemed more ____8____. The light bulb had been invented.
Thus the long search for a railway that could run on air was abandoned.
...7...
bicycles
automobiles
saiboats
steamboats