Electric Locomotive - History

History

The first known electric locomotive was built in 1837 by chemist Robert Davidson of Aberdeen. It was powered by galvanic cells ('batteries'). Davidson later built a larger locomotive named Galvani which was exhibited at the Royal Scottish Society of Arts Exhibition in 1841. The seven-ton vehicle had two direct-drive reluctance motors, with fixed electromagnets acting on iron bars attached to a wooden cylinder mounted on each axle, and simple commutators. It hauled a load of six tons at four miles per hour for a distance of one and a half miles. The machine was tested on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway in September of the following year, but the limited electric power available from batteries prevented its general use. It was destroyed by railway workers, who saw it as a threat to their security of employment. The first electric passenger train was presented by Werner von Siemens at Berlin in 1879. The locomotive was driven by a 2.2 kW, series-wound motor, and the train, consisting of the locomotive and three cars, reached a maximum speed of 13 km/h. During four months, the train carried 90,000 passengers on a 300-metre-long circular track. The electricity (150 V DC) was supplied through a third, insulated rail situated between the tracks. A contact roller was used to collect the electricity from the third rail. The world's first electric tram line opened in Lichterfelde near Berlin, Germany, in 1881. It was built by Werner von Siemens (see Gross-Lichterfelde Tramway and Berlin Straßenbahn). In Britain, Volk's electric railway was opened in 1883 in Brighton (see Volk's Electric Railway). Also in 1883, Mödling and Hinterbrühl Tram was opened near Vienna in Austria. It was the first tram and railway in the world in regular service that was run with electricity served by an overhead line. Five years later, in the US electric trolleys were pioneered in 1888 on the Richmond Union Passenger Railway, using equipment designed by Frank J. Sprague.

Much of the early development of electric locomotion was driven by the increasing use of tunnels, particularly in urban areas. Smoke from steam locomotives was noxious and municipalities were increasingly inclined to prohibit their use within their limits. Thus the first successful working, the City and South London Railway underground line in the UK, was prompted by a clause in its enabling act prohibiting use of steam power. This line opened in 1890, using electric locomotives built by Mather and Platt. Electricity quickly became the power supply of choice for subways, abetted by the Sprague's invention of multiple-unit train control in 1897. Surface and elevated rapid transit systems generally used steam until forced to convert by ordinance.

The first use of electrification on a mainline was on a four-mile stretch of the Baltimore Belt Line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) in 1895. This track connected the main portion of the B&O to the newly built line to New York and it required a series of tunnels around the edges of Baltimore's downtown. Parallel tracks on the Pennsylvania Railroad had shown that coal smoke from steam locomotives would be a major operating issue, as well as a public nuisance. Three Bo+Bo units were initially used, at the south end of the electrified section; they coupled onto the entire train, locomotive and all and pulled it through the tunnels. Railroad entrances to New York City required similar tunnels and the smoke problems were more acute there. A collision in the Park Avenue tunnel in 1902 led the New York State legislature to outlaw the use of smoke-generating locomotives south of the Harlem River after 1 July 1908. In response, electric locomotives began operation in 1904 on the New York Central Railroad. In the 1930s, the Pennsylvania Railroad, which also had introduced electric locomotives because of the NYC regulation, electrified its entire territory east of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (the Milwaukee Road), the last transcontinental line to be built, electrified its lines across the Rocky Mountains and to the Pacific Ocean starting in 1915. A few East Coast lines, notably the Virginian Railway and the Norfolk and Western Railway, found it expedient to electrify short sections of their mountain crossings. However, by this point, electrification in the United States was more associated with dense urban traffic and the use of electric locomotives declined in the face of dieselization. Diesels shared some of the electric locomotive’s advantages of over steam and the cost of building and maintaining the power supply infrastructure, which had always worked to discourage new installations, brought on the elimination of most mainline electrification outside the Northeast. Except for a few captive systems (e.g. the Black Mesa and Lake Powell), by 2000 electrification was confined to the Northeast Corridor and some commuter service; even there, freight service was handled by diesels. The centre of development shifted to Europe, where electrification was widespread.