Last Saturday and on subsequent days some interesting and important
experiments were carried out on the Great Western Railway with solid oil fuel. On Saturday last, for example, as we learn from the Daily Express, a train between Swindon. and Didcot ran at the rate of sixty miles an hour. The engine, it is said, had never reached this speed with coal. The engine had not been adapted in any way to the use of the new fuel. Steam was got up with coal, and then the solid blocks of oil fuel were shovelled in upon a remaining layer of hot cinders. The firemen had had no previous experience of oil fuel. In all directions oil fuel, both liquid and solid, is being tried, and it cannot be doubted that the demand for coal will in future be less than it would have been had there been no coal strike. The chief sufferers, of course, will be those whose employment depends upon the demand—the miners themselves.
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