One of the biggest puzzles of my life has been why underground pneumatic
transport has not yet been adopted. It will be one day, I'm quite sure,
because its energy savings will be immense. Furthermore, if coupled with
magnetic levitation it would be cheaper still. Furthermore, even if much of
the northern hemisphere were to be covered in glaciers again in a new ice
age, a pneumatic system would still allow the continuing extraction and
transportation of resources wherever they might exist. Furthermore, it
would facilitate the daily commutes of hundreds of millions of people at
almost no cost and very rapidly from their homes in lovely environments in
the warm middle regions of the earth to tend bacterial farms (producing
hydrogen) sitting on top of the descending ice sheet.
The idea of pneumatic railways was first thoroughly written up in an 1812
pamphlet by a genius few people have ever heard of. He was George Medhurst
(1759-1827). His concept was building on the earlier ideas of a clutch of
geniuses whom people certainly do know about -- including Christiaan
Huygens, Denis Papin, Robert Hooke and Robert Boyle -- and who had carried
out several experiments between 1660 and 1690. Medhurst was then followed
up by two more engineers of genius -- John Vallance (1759-1833) and (who
else?!) Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859) -- who actually built pneumatic
railways.
Indeed, a demonstration system was built at Crystal Palace, London, in 1864
and another was constructed under Broadway, New York in 1870 and both
worked well. These were the obvious conceptual forerunners of metro systems
that we now have in all the major cities of the world, apart from the basic
pneumatics. The full-scale pneumatics content of the idea was then
readopted by a team of Lockheed engineers in the 1960s who designed a 400
mile route carrying commuters at 400 mph between Boston and Washington.
More recently a pneumatic railways was seriously proposed by Swiss
engineers in the early 90s for a vast inter-city system that would burrow
through Switzerland's mountains.
Now that an underground pneumatic system has been proved, theoretically and
practically, from every possible angle -- as well as any proposed system
could ever be -- what has prevented its widespread adoption so far? The
answer is quite simple. In the 19th century it was so much cheaper to lay
down steel tracks and to build steam locomotives that ran above ground
rather than to burrow beneath it. And, ever since then, as energy became
cheaper and cheaper, road and railway engineers -- as conservative as most
everyone else! -- have been easily tempted to develop systems that had
already come into existence.
But now that energy is going to become more expensive in the years to come,
and as very large countries such as Russia, China, India and America are
either building extensive new rail networks (or, in America's case,
dithering about them), then it won't be long before pneumatic
transportation systems will again be given serious consideration. It could
also become a large new employment sector for millions of people in the
West (mainly young males) who, in an increasingly automated age, are simply
not needed by our present economic system. It would be most beneficial if
they were started sooner rather than later.
I first read about pneumatic transportation in Scientific American (August
1965, Vol 213, No 2) and this is still a good introductory read for anybody
who is interested.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
<http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/>http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/
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