Locomotive, any of various self-propelled vehicles used for hauling railroad cars on tracks.
Although motive power for a train-set can be incorporated into a car that also has passenger, baggage, or freight accommodations, it most often is provided by a separate unit, the locomotive, which includes the machinery to generate (or, in the case of an electric locomotive, to convert) power and transmit it to the driving wheels. Today there are two main sources of power for a locomotive: oil (in the form of diesel fuel) and electricity. Steam, the earliest form of propulsion, was in almost universal use until about the time of World War II; since then it has been superseded by the more efficient diesel and electric traction.
The steam locomotive was a self-sufficient unit, carrying its own water supply for generating the steam and coal, oil, or wood for heating the boiler. The diesel locomotive also carries its own fuel supply, but the diesel-engine output cannot be coupled directly to the wheels; instead, a mechanical, electric, or hydraulic transmission must be used. The electric locomotive is not self-sufficient; it picks up current from an overhead wire or a third rail beside the running rails. Third-rail supply is employed only by urban rapid-transit railroads operating on low-voltage direct current.
In the 1950s and ’60s the gas turbine was adopted by one American railroad and some European ones as an alternative to the diesel engine. Although its advantages have been nullified by advances in diesel traction technology and increases in oil price, it is still proposed as an alternative means for installing high-speed rail service for regions where no infrastructure for electric power is in place.
Steam-locomotive driving wheels were of various sizes, usually larger for the faster passenger engines. The average was about a 1,829–2,032-mm (72–80-inch) diameter for passenger engines and 1,372–1,676 mm (54–66 inches) for freight or mixed-traffic types.
Supplies of fuel (usually coal but sometimes oil) and water could be carried on the locomotive frame itself (in which case it was called a tank engine) or in a separate vehicle, the tender, coupled to the locomotive. The tender of a typical European main-line locomotive had a capacity of 9,000 kg (10 tons) of coal and 30,000 litres (8,000 gallons) of water. In North America, higher capacities were common.
To meet the special needs of heavy freight traffic in some countries, notably the United States, greater tractive effort was obtained by using two separate engine units under a common boiler. The front engine was articulated, or hinge-connected to the frame of the rear engine, so that the very large locomotive could negotiate curves. The articulated locomotive was originally a Swiss invention, with the first built in 1888. The largest ever built was the Union Pacific’s Big Boy, used in mountain freight service in the western United States. Big Boy weighed more than 600 short tons, including the tender. It could exert 61,400 kg (135,400 pounds) of tractive force and developed more than 6,000 horsepower at 112 km (70 miles) per hour.
One of the best-known articulated designs was the Beyer-Garratt, which had two frames, each having its own driving wheels and cylinders, surmounted by water tanks. Separating the two chassis was another frame carrying the boiler, cab, and fuel supply. This type of locomotive was valuable on lightly laid track; it could also negotiate sharp curves. It was widely used in Africa.
Various refinements gradually improved the reciprocating steam locomotive. Some included higher boiler pressures (up to 2,000–2,060 kilopascals [290–300 pounds per square inch] for some of the last locomotives, compared with about 1,300 kilopascals [200 pounds per square inch] for earlier designs), superheating, feed-water preheating, roller bearings, and the use of poppet (perpendicular) valves rather than sliding piston valves.
Still, the thermal efficiency of even the ultimate steam locomotives seldom exceeded about 6 percent. Incomplete combustion and heat losses from the firebox, boiler, cylinders, and elsewhere dissipated most of the energy of the fuel burned. For this reason the steam locomotive became obsolete, but only slowly, because it had compensating advantages, notably its simplicity and ability to withstand abuse.
By World War I a number of electrified lines were operating both in Europe and in the United States. Major electrification programs were undertaken after that war in such countries as Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Germany, and Austria. By the end of the 1920s nearly every European country had at least a small percentage of electrified track. Electric traction also was introduced in Australia (1919), New Zealand (1923), India (1925), Indonesia (1925), and South Africa (1926). A number of metropolitan terminals and suburban services were electrified between 1900 and 1938 in the United States, and there were a few main-line electrifications. The advent of the diesel locomotive inhibited further trunk route electrification in the United States after 1938, but following World War II such electrification was rapidly extended elsewhere. Today a significant percentage of the standard-gauge track in national railroads around the world is electrified—for example, in Japan (100 percent), Switzerland (92 percent), Belgium (91 percent), the Netherlands (76 percent), Spain (76 percent), Italy (68 percent), Sweden (65 percent), Austria (65 percent), Norway (62 percent), South Korea (55 percent), France (52 percent), Germany (48 percent), China (42 percent), and the United Kingdom (32 percent). By contrast, in the United States, which has some 225,000 km (140,000 miles) of standard-gauge track, electrified routes hardly exist outside the Northeast Corridor, where Amtrak runs the 720-km (450-mile) Acela Express between Boston and Washington, D.C.
The century’s second half also was marked by the creation in cities worldwide of many new electrified urban rapid-transit rail systems, as well as extension of existing systems.
The greatest drawbacks to electrified operation are the high capital investment and maintenance cost of the fixed plant—the traction current wires and structures and power substations—and the costly changes that are usually required in signaling systems to immunize their circuitry against interference from the high traction-current voltages and to adapt their performance to the superior acceleration and sustained speeds obtainable from electric traction.
The potential advantages of using alternating instead of direct current prompted early experiments and applications of this system. With alternating current, especially with relatively high overhead-wire voltages (10,000 volts or above), fewer substations are required, and the lighter overhead current supply wire that can be used correspondingly reduces the weight of structures needed to support it, to the further benefit of capital costs of electrification. In the early decades of high-voltage alternating current electrification, available alternating-current motors were not suitable for operation with alternating current of the standard commercial or industrial frequencies (50 hertz [cycles per second] in Europe; 60 hertz in the United States and parts of Japan). It was necessary to use a lower frequency (16 2/3 hertz is common in Europe; 25 hertz in the United States); this in turn required either special railroad power plants to generate alternating current at the required frequency or frequency-conversion equipment to change the available commercial frequency into the railroad frequency.
Nevertheless, alternating-current supply systems at 16 2/3 hertz became the standard on several European railroads, such as Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, where electrification began before World War II. Several main-line electrifications in the eastern United States were built using 25-hertz alternating current, which survives in the Northeast Corridor operated by Amtrak.
Interest in using commercial-frequency alternating current in the overhead wire continued, however; and in 1933 experiments were carried out in both Hungary and Germany. The German State Railways electrified its Höllenthal branch at 20,000 volts, 50 hertz.
In 1945 Louis Armand, former president of the French railroads, went ahead with further development of this system and converted a line between Aix-Les-Bains and La Roche-sur-Foron for the first practical experiments. This was so successful that the 25,000-volt, 50- or 60-hertz system has become virtually the standard for new main-line electrification systems.
With commercial-frequency, alternating-current systems, there are two practical ways of taking power to the locomotive driving wheels: (1) by a rotary converter or static rectifier on the locomotive to convert the alternating-current supply into direct current at low voltage to drive standard direct-current traction motors and (2) by a converter system to produce variable-frequency current to drive alternating-current motors. The first method, using nonmechanical rectifiers, was standard practice until the end of the 1970s.
The power-to-weight ratios obtainable with electric traction units had been greatly increased by the end of World War II. Reduction in the bulk of on-board electric apparatus and motors, coupled in the latter with a simultaneous rise in attainable power output, enabled Swiss production for the Bern-Lötschberg-Simplon Railway in 1944 of a 4,000-horsepower locomotive weighing only 80,000 kg (176,370 pounds). Its four axles were all motored. There was no longer need of nonmotorized axles to keep weight on each wheel-set within limits acceptable by the track.
By 1960 the electric industry was producing transformer and rectifier packages slim enough to fit under the frames of a motored urban rapid-transit car, thereby making almost its entire body available for passenger seating. This helped to accelerate and expand the industrialized world’s electrification of metropolitan railway networks for operation by self-powered train-sets (i.e., with some or all vehicles motored). A virtue of the self-powered train-set principle is its easy adaptation to peaks of traffic demand. When two or more sets are coupled, the additional sets have the extra needed traction power. With both electric and diesel traction it is simple to interconnect electrically the power and braking controls of all the train-sets so that the train they form can be driven from a single cab. Because of this facility such train-sets are widely known as multiple-units. Modern multiple-units are increasingly fitted with automatic couplers that combine a draft function with connection of all power, braking, and other control circuits between two train-sets; this is achieved by automatic engagement, when couplers interlock, of a nest of electric contacts built into each coupler head.
From about 1960 major advances in electric traction accrued from the application of electronics. Particularly significant was the perfection of the semiconductor thyristor, or “chopper,” control of current supply to motors. The thyristor—a rapid-action, high-power switch with which the “on” and “off” periods of each cycle can be fractionally varied—achieved smoothly graduated application of voltage to traction motors. Besides eliminating wear-prone parts and greatly improving an electric traction unit’s adhesion, thyristor control also reduced current consumption.
Three-phase alternating-current motor traction became practicable in the 1980s. With electronics it was possible to compress to manageable weight and size the complex equipment needed to transmute the overhead wire or third-rail current to a supply of variable voltage and frequency suitable for feeding to three-phase alternating-current motors. For railroad traction the alternating-current motor is preferable to a direct-current machine on several counts. It is an induction motor with a squirrel-cage rotor (that is, solid conductors in the slots are shorted together by end rings), and it has no commutators or brushes and no mechanically contacting parts except bearings, so that it is much simpler to maintain and more reliable. It is more compact than a direct motor, so more power is obtainable for a specified motor size and weight; the 6,000-kg (14,000-pound) alternating-current motor in each truck of a modern French National Railways electric locomotive delivers a continuous 3,750 horsepower.
The torque of an alternating-current motor increases with speed, whereas that of a direct-current motor is initially high and falls with rising speed; consequently, the alternating-current motor offers superior adhesion for acceleration of heavy trainloads. Finally, the alternating-current motor is more easily switched into a generating mode to act as a dynamic (rheostatic) or regenerative vehicle brake. (In dynamic braking the current generated to oppose the train’s momentum is dissipated through on-board resistances. In regenerative braking, adopted on mountain or intensively operated urban lines where the surplus current can be readily taken up by other trains, it is fed back into the overhead wire or third rail.) The drawbacks of three-phase alternating-current traction are the intricacy of the on-board electrical equipment needed to convert the current supply before it reaches the motors and its higher capital cost by comparison with direct-current motor systems.
A separate traction motor normally serves each axle via a suitably geared drive. For simplicity of final drive it was for many years standard practice to mount the traction motors on a locomotive’s axles. As train speeds rose, it became increasingly important to limit the impact on the track of unsprung masses. Now motors are either suspended within a locomotive’s trucks or, in the case of some high-speed units, suspended from the locomotive’s body and linked to the axles’ final drive gearboxes by flexible drive shafts.
The direct-current motor’s torque:speed characteristics make a locomotive designed for fast passenger trains, whether electric or diesel-electric, generally unsuitable for freight train work. The heavier loads of the latter require different gearing of the final drives—which will reduce maximum speed—and possibly an increase in the number of motored axles, for increased adhesion. But considerable mixed-traffic haulage capability is obtainable with three-phase alternating-current motors because of their superior adhesion characteristics.
Direct-current motor technology was employed in Japan’s first Shinkansen and France’s first Paris-Lyon TGV trains, but by the early 1990s three-phase alternating-current traction had been adopted for both Japanese and European very-high-speed train-sets—and by extension the systems around the world that have been derived from them. In Europe, international train operation without a locomotive change at frontiers is complicated by the railways’ historic adoption of different electrification systems, either 1,500 or 3,000 volts direct current or 25,000 volts 50 hertz or 15,000 volts 16 2/3 hertz alternating current. For instance, TGV-type trains could not operatie at full efficiency between London, Paris, and Brussels on the Eurostar line via the Channel Tunnel as long as they had to accommodate French 25,000-volt alternating-current overhead wire, Belgian 3,000-volt direct-current overhead wire, and British 750-volt third-rail supply. The French had perfected traction units capable of operating on more than one voltage system soon after they decided to adopt 25,000-volt alternating-current electrification in areas not wired at their previous 1,500-volt direct current. Nevertheless, where very-high-speed traction was concerned, it was impossible to contain within acceptable locomotive weight limits the equipment needed for equivalent high-power output under each system. Only after all the new high-speed lines were electrified on high-voltage alternating current was a true high-speed service available on the Eurostar line.
Since about 1980 the performance and economy of both electric and diesel traction unitshave been considerably advanced by the interposition between driving controls and vital components of microprocessors, which ensure that the components respond with maximum efficiency and that they are not inadvertently overtaxed. Another product of the application of electronics to controls is that in the modern electric locomotive the engine operator can set the train speed he wishes to reach or maintain, and the traction equipment will automatically apply or vary the appropriate power to the motors, taking account of train weight and track gradient. The microprocessors also serve a diagnostic function, continuously monitoring the state of the systems they control for signs of incipient or actual fault. The microprocessors are linked to a main on-board computer that instantly reports the nature and location of an actual or potential malfunction to a visual display in the driving cab, generally with advice for the cab crew on how it might be rectified or its effects temporarily mitigated. The cab display also indicates the effectiveness of the countermeasures taken. The computer automatically stores such data, either for downloading to maintenance staff at the journey’s end or, on a railroad equipped with train-to-ground-installation radio, for immediate transmission to a maintenance establishment so that preparations for repair of a fault are in place as soon as the traction unit ends its run. In newer very-high-speed, fixed-formation train-sets, a through-train fibre-optics transmission system concentrates data from the microprocessor controls—both those of passenger car systems, such as air-conditioning and power-operated entrance doors, and those of the rear locomotive or, in the Japanese Shinkansen train-sets, the traction equipment dispersed among a proportion of its cars.
What caused the diesel to supersede the steam locomotive so rapidly was the pressure of competition from other modes of transport and the continuing rise in wage costs, which forced the railroads to improve their services and adopt every possible measure to increase operating efficiency. Compared with steam, the diesel traction unit had a number of major advantages:
1. It could operate for long periods with no lost time for maintenance; thus, in North America the diesel could operate through on a run of 3,200 km (2,000 miles) or more and then, after servicing, start the return trip. Steam locomotives required extensive servicing after only a few hours’ operation.
2. It used less fuel energy than a steam locomotive, for its thermal efficiency was about four times as great.
3. It could accelerate a train more rapidly and operate at higher sustained speeds with less damage to the track.
In addition, the diesel was superior to the steam locomotive because of its smoother acceleration, greater cleanliness, standardized repair parts, and operating flexibility (a number of diesel units could be combined and run by one operator under multiple-unit control).
The diesel-electric locomotive is, essentially, an electric locomotive that carries its own power plant. Its use, therefore, brings to a railroad some of the advantages of electrification, but without the capital cost of the power distribution and feed-wire system. As compared with an electric locomotive, however, the diesel-electric has an important drawback: since its output is essentially limited to that of its diesel engine, it can develop less horsepower per locomotive unit. Because high horsepower is required for high-speed operation, the diesel is, therefore, less desirable than the electric for high-speed passenger services and very fast freight operations.
The next step was to build a separate diesel-electric locomotive unit that could haul any train. In 1935 one such unit was delivered to the Baltimore and Ohio and two to the Santa Fe Railway Company. These were passenger units; the first road freight locomotive, a four-unit, 5,400-horsepower Electro-Motive Division, General Motors Corporation demonstrator, was not built until 1939.
By the end of World War II, the diesel locomotive had become a proven, standardized type of motive power, and it rapidly began to supersede the steam locomotive in North America. In the United States a fleet of 27,000 diesel locomotives proved fully capable of performing more transportation work than the 40,000 steam locomotives they replaced.
After World War II, the use of diesel traction greatly increased throughout the world, though the pace of conversion was generally slower than in the United States.
Most yard-switching and short-haul locomotives are equipped with diesel engines ranging from 600 to 1,800 horsepower; road units commonly have engines ranging from 2,000 to 4,000 horsepower. Most builders use V-type engines, although in-line types are used on smaller locomotives and for underfloor fitment on railcars and multiple-unit train-sets.
The most commonly employed method of power transmission is electric, to convert the mechanical energy produced by the diesel engine to current for electric traction motors. Through most of the 20th century the universal method was to couple the diesel engine to a direct-current generator, from which, through appropriate controls, the current was fed to the motors. Beginning in the 1970s, the availability of compact semiconductor rectifiers enabled replacement of the direct-current generator by an alternator, which is able to produce more power and is less costly to maintain than an equivalent direct-current machine. For supply of series-wound direct-current traction motors, static rectifiers converted the three-phase alternating-current output of the alternator to direct current. Then in the 1980s European manufacturers began to adopt the three-phase alternating-current motor for diesel-electric traction units seeking advantages similar to those obtainable from this technology in electric traction. This requires the direct-current output from the rectifier to be transmuted by a thyristor-controlled inverter into athree-phase variable voltage and frequency supply for the alternating-current motors.
On some railroads with lightly laid track, generally those with narrow rail gauge, locomotives may still need nonmotored as well as motored axles for acceptable weight and bulk distribution. But the great majority of diesel-electric locomotives now have all axles powered.
Other types of transmissions also are used in diesel locomotives. The hydraulic transmission, which first became quite popular in Germany, is often favoured for diesel railcars and multiple-unit train-sets. It employs a centrifugal pump or impeller driving a turbine in a chamber filled with oil or a similar fluid. The pump, driven by the diesel engine, converts the engine power to kinetic energy in the oil impinging on the turbine blades. The faster the blades move, the less the relative impinging speed of the oil and the faster the locomotive moves.
Mechanical transmission is the simplest type; it is mainly used in very low-power switching locomotives and in low-power diesel railcars. Basically it is a clutch and gearbox similar to those used in automobiles. A hydraulic coupling, in some cases, is used in place of a friction clutch.
1. The light passenger railcar or rail bus (up to 200 horsepower), which usually is four-wheeled and has mechanical transmission. It may be designed to haul a light trailer car. Use of such vehicles is very limited.
2. The four-axle passenger railcar (up to 750 horsepower), which can be operated independently, haul a nonpowered trailer, or be formed into a semipermanent train-set such as a multiple-unit with all or a proportion of the cars powered. In the powered cars the diesel engine and all associated traction equipment, including fuel tanks, are capable of fitting under the floor to free space above the frames for passenger seating. Transmission is either electric or hydraulic. Modern railcars and railcar train-sets are mostly equipped for multiple-unit train operation, with driving control from a single cab.
3. Locomotives (10 to 4,000 horsepower), which may have mechanical transmission if very low-powered or hydraulic transmission for outputs of up to about 2,000 horsepower but in most cases have electric transmission, the choice depending on power output and purpose.
A substantial increase of diesel engine power-to-weight ratios and the application of electronics to component control and diagnostic systems brought significant advances in the efficiency of diesel locomotives in the last quarter of the 20th century. In 1990 a diesel engine with a continuous rating of 3,500 horsepower was available at almost half the weight of a similar model in 1970. At the same time, the fuel efficiency of diesel engines was significantly improved.
Electronics have made a particularly important contribution to the load-hauling capability of diesel-electric locomotives in road freight work, by improving adhesion at starting or in grade-climbing. A locomotive accelerating from rest can develop from 33 to 50 percent more tractive force if its powered wheels are allowed to “creep” into a very slight, steady, and finely controlled slip. In a typical “creep control” system, Doppler radar mounted under the locomotive precisely measures true ground speed, against which microprocessors calculate the ideal creep speed limit in the prevailing track conditions and automatically regulate current supply to the traction motors. The process is continuous, so that current levels are immediately adjusted to match a change in track parameters. In the 1960s, North Americans considered that a diesel-electric locomotive of 3,000–3,600 horsepower or more must have six motored axles for effective adhesion: two railroads had acquired a small number of eight-motored-axle locomotives, each powered by two diesel engines, with outputs of 5,000–6,600 horsepower. Since the mid-1980s four-axle locomotives of up to 4,000 horsepower have become feasible and are widely employed in fast freight service (though for heavy freight duty six-axle locomotives were still preferred). But today a 4,000-horsepower rating is obtainable from a 16-cylinder diesel engine, whereas in the 1960s a 3,600-horsepower output demanded a 20-cylinder engine. This, coupled with the reduction in the number of locomotives required to haul a given tonnage due to improved adhesion, has been a key factor in decreasing locomotive maintenance costs.
Outside North America, widespread electrification all but ended production of diesel locomotives purpose-built for passenger train haulage in the 1960s. The last development for high-speed diesel service was on British Railways, which, for its nonelectrified trunk routes, mass-produced a semipermanent train-set, the InterCity 125, that had a 2,250-horsepower locomotive at each end of seven or eight intermediate cars. In 1987 one of these sets established a world speed record for diesel traction of 238 km (148 miles) per hour. Some InterCity 125 sets are expected to remain in service under various other designations until well into the 21st century. In North America, Amtrak in the United States and VIA in Canada, as well as some urban mass-transit authorities, still operate diesel locomotives exclusively on passenger trains. Elsewhere road haul diesel locomotives are designed either for exclusive freight haulage or for mixed passenger and freight work.
After World War II easy directional reversibility of passenger train-sets became increasingly important for intensively operated short- and medium-haul services, to reduce terminal turnround times and minimize the number of train-sets needed to provide the service. The most popular medium has been the self-powered railcar or multiple-unit train-set, with a driving cab at each end, so that reversal requires only that the crew change cabs. An alternative, known as push-pull, has a normal locomotive at one end and, at the other, a nonpowered passenger or baggage car, known as the driving or control trailer, with a driving cab at its extremity. In one direction the locomotive pulls the train; in the other, unmanned, it propels the train, driven via through-train wiring from the control trailer’s cab. A potential operating advantage of push-pull as opposed to use of self-powered train-sets on a railroad running both passenger and freight trains is that at night, when passenger operation has ceased, the locomotives can be detached for freight haulage.
Although motive power for a train-set can be incorporated into a car that also has passenger, baggage, or freight accommodations, it most often is provided by a separate unit, the locomotive, which includes the machinery to generate (or, in the case of an electric locomotive, to convert) power and transmit it to the driving wheels. Today there are two main sources of power for a locomotive: oil (in the form of diesel fuel) and electricity. Steam, the earliest form of propulsion, was in almost universal use until about the time of World War II; since then it has been superseded by the more efficient diesel and electric traction.
The steam locomotive was a self-sufficient unit, carrying its own water supply for generating the steam and coal, oil, or wood for heating the boiler. The diesel locomotive also carries its own fuel supply, but the diesel-engine output cannot be coupled directly to the wheels; instead, a mechanical, electric, or hydraulic transmission must be used. The electric locomotive is not self-sufficient; it picks up current from an overhead wire or a third rail beside the running rails. Third-rail supply is employed only by urban rapid-transit railroads operating on low-voltage direct current.
In the 1950s and ’60s the gas turbine was adopted by one American railroad and some European ones as an alternative to the diesel engine. Although its advantages have been nullified by advances in diesel traction technology and increases in oil price, it is still proposed as an alternative means for installing high-speed rail service for regions where no infrastructure for electric power is in place.
Steam locomotives
The basic features that made George and Robert Stephenson’s Rocket of 1829 successful—its multitube boiler and its system of exhausting the steam and creating a draft in its firebox—continued to be used in the steam locomotive to the end of its career. The number of coupled drive wheels soon increased. The Rocket had only a single pair of driving wheels, but four coupled wheels soon became common, and eventually some locomotives were built with as many as 14 coupled drivers.Steam-locomotive driving wheels were of various sizes, usually larger for the faster passenger engines. The average was about a 1,829–2,032-mm (72–80-inch) diameter for passenger engines and 1,372–1,676 mm (54–66 inches) for freight or mixed-traffic types.
Supplies of fuel (usually coal but sometimes oil) and water could be carried on the locomotive frame itself (in which case it was called a tank engine) or in a separate vehicle, the tender, coupled to the locomotive. The tender of a typical European main-line locomotive had a capacity of 9,000 kg (10 tons) of coal and 30,000 litres (8,000 gallons) of water. In North America, higher capacities were common.
To meet the special needs of heavy freight traffic in some countries, notably the United States, greater tractive effort was obtained by using two separate engine units under a common boiler. The front engine was articulated, or hinge-connected to the frame of the rear engine, so that the very large locomotive could negotiate curves. The articulated locomotive was originally a Swiss invention, with the first built in 1888. The largest ever built was the Union Pacific’s Big Boy, used in mountain freight service in the western United States. Big Boy weighed more than 600 short tons, including the tender. It could exert 61,400 kg (135,400 pounds) of tractive force and developed more than 6,000 horsepower at 112 km (70 miles) per hour.
One of the best-known articulated designs was the Beyer-Garratt, which had two frames, each having its own driving wheels and cylinders, surmounted by water tanks. Separating the two chassis was another frame carrying the boiler, cab, and fuel supply. This type of locomotive was valuable on lightly laid track; it could also negotiate sharp curves. It was widely used in Africa.
Various refinements gradually improved the reciprocating steam locomotive. Some included higher boiler pressures (up to 2,000–2,060 kilopascals [290–300 pounds per square inch] for some of the last locomotives, compared with about 1,300 kilopascals [200 pounds per square inch] for earlier designs), superheating, feed-water preheating, roller bearings, and the use of poppet (perpendicular) valves rather than sliding piston valves.
Still, the thermal efficiency of even the ultimate steam locomotives seldom exceeded about 6 percent. Incomplete combustion and heat losses from the firebox, boiler, cylinders, and elsewhere dissipated most of the energy of the fuel burned. For this reason the steam locomotive became obsolete, but only slowly, because it had compensating advantages, notably its simplicity and ability to withstand abuse.
Electric traction
Efforts to propel railroad vehicles using batteries date from 1835, but the first successful application of electric traction was in 1879, when an electric locomotive ran at an exhibition in Berlin. The first commercial applications of electric traction were for suburban or metropolitan railroads. One of the earliest came in 1895, when the Baltimore and Ohio electrified a stretch of track in Baltimore to avoid smoke and noise problems in a tunnel. One of the first countries to use electric traction for main-line operations was Italy, where a system was inaugurated as early as 1902.By World War I a number of electrified lines were operating both in Europe and in the United States. Major electrification programs were undertaken after that war in such countries as Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Germany, and Austria. By the end of the 1920s nearly every European country had at least a small percentage of electrified track. Electric traction also was introduced in Australia (1919), New Zealand (1923), India (1925), Indonesia (1925), and South Africa (1926). A number of metropolitan terminals and suburban services were electrified between 1900 and 1938 in the United States, and there were a few main-line electrifications. The advent of the diesel locomotive inhibited further trunk route electrification in the United States after 1938, but following World War II such electrification was rapidly extended elsewhere. Today a significant percentage of the standard-gauge track in national railroads around the world is electrified—for example, in Japan (100 percent), Switzerland (92 percent), Belgium (91 percent), the Netherlands (76 percent), Spain (76 percent), Italy (68 percent), Sweden (65 percent), Austria (65 percent), Norway (62 percent), South Korea (55 percent), France (52 percent), Germany (48 percent), China (42 percent), and the United Kingdom (32 percent). By contrast, in the United States, which has some 225,000 km (140,000 miles) of standard-gauge track, electrified routes hardly exist outside the Northeast Corridor, where Amtrak runs the 720-km (450-mile) Acela Express between Boston and Washington, D.C.
The century’s second half also was marked by the creation in cities worldwide of many new electrified urban rapid-transit rail systems, as well as extension of existing systems.
Advantages and disadvantages
Electric traction is generally considered the most economical and efficient means of operating a railroad, provided that cheap electricity is available and that the traffic density justifies the heavy capital cost. Being simply power-converting, rather than power-generating, devices, electric locomotives have several advantages. They can draw on the resources of the central power plant to develop power greatly in excess of their nominal ratings to start a heavy train or to surmount a steep grade at high speed. A typical modern electric locomotive rated at 6,000 horsepower has been observed to develop as much as 10,000 horsepower for a short period under these conditions. Moreover, electric locomotives are quieter in operation than other types and produce no smoke or fumes. Electric locomotives require little time in the shop for maintenance, their maintenance costs are low, and they have a longer life than diesels.The greatest drawbacks to electrified operation are the high capital investment and maintenance cost of the fixed plant—the traction current wires and structures and power substations—and the costly changes that are usually required in signaling systems to immunize their circuitry against interference from the high traction-current voltages and to adapt their performance to the superior acceleration and sustained speeds obtainable from electric traction.
Types of traction systems
Electric-traction systems can be broadly divided into those using alternating current and those using direct current. With direct current, the most popular line voltages for overhead wire supply systems have been 1,500 and 3,000. Third-rail systems are predominantly in the 600–750-volt range. The disadvantages of direct current are that expensive substations are required at frequent intervals and the overhead wire or third rail must be relatively large and heavy. The low-voltage, series-wound, direct-current motor is well suited to railroad traction, being simple to construct and easy to control. Until the late 20th century it was universally employed in electric and diesel-electric traction units.The potential advantages of using alternating instead of direct current prompted early experiments and applications of this system. With alternating current, especially with relatively high overhead-wire voltages (10,000 volts or above), fewer substations are required, and the lighter overhead current supply wire that can be used correspondingly reduces the weight of structures needed to support it, to the further benefit of capital costs of electrification. In the early decades of high-voltage alternating current electrification, available alternating-current motors were not suitable for operation with alternating current of the standard commercial or industrial frequencies (50 hertz [cycles per second] in Europe; 60 hertz in the United States and parts of Japan). It was necessary to use a lower frequency (16 2/3 hertz is common in Europe; 25 hertz in the United States); this in turn required either special railroad power plants to generate alternating current at the required frequency or frequency-conversion equipment to change the available commercial frequency into the railroad frequency.
Nevertheless, alternating-current supply systems at 16 2/3 hertz became the standard on several European railroads, such as Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, where electrification began before World War II. Several main-line electrifications in the eastern United States were built using 25-hertz alternating current, which survives in the Northeast Corridor operated by Amtrak.
Interest in using commercial-frequency alternating current in the overhead wire continued, however; and in 1933 experiments were carried out in both Hungary and Germany. The German State Railways electrified its Höllenthal branch at 20,000 volts, 50 hertz.
In 1945 Louis Armand, former president of the French railroads, went ahead with further development of this system and converted a line between Aix-Les-Bains and La Roche-sur-Foron for the first practical experiments. This was so successful that the 25,000-volt, 50- or 60-hertz system has become virtually the standard for new main-line electrification systems.
With commercial-frequency, alternating-current systems, there are two practical ways of taking power to the locomotive driving wheels: (1) by a rotary converter or static rectifier on the locomotive to convert the alternating-current supply into direct current at low voltage to drive standard direct-current traction motors and (2) by a converter system to produce variable-frequency current to drive alternating-current motors. The first method, using nonmechanical rectifiers, was standard practice until the end of the 1970s.
The power-to-weight ratios obtainable with electric traction units had been greatly increased by the end of World War II. Reduction in the bulk of on-board electric apparatus and motors, coupled in the latter with a simultaneous rise in attainable power output, enabled Swiss production for the Bern-Lötschberg-Simplon Railway in 1944 of a 4,000-horsepower locomotive weighing only 80,000 kg (176,370 pounds). Its four axles were all motored. There was no longer need of nonmotorized axles to keep weight on each wheel-set within limits acceptable by the track.
By 1960 the electric industry was producing transformer and rectifier packages slim enough to fit under the frames of a motored urban rapid-transit car, thereby making almost its entire body available for passenger seating. This helped to accelerate and expand the industrialized world’s electrification of metropolitan railway networks for operation by self-powered train-sets (i.e., with some or all vehicles motored). A virtue of the self-powered train-set principle is its easy adaptation to peaks of traffic demand. When two or more sets are coupled, the additional sets have the extra needed traction power. With both electric and diesel traction it is simple to interconnect electrically the power and braking controls of all the train-sets so that the train they form can be driven from a single cab. Because of this facility such train-sets are widely known as multiple-units. Modern multiple-units are increasingly fitted with automatic couplers that combine a draft function with connection of all power, braking, and other control circuits between two train-sets; this is achieved by automatic engagement, when couplers interlock, of a nest of electric contacts built into each coupler head.
From about 1960 major advances in electric traction accrued from the application of electronics. Particularly significant was the perfection of the semiconductor thyristor, or “chopper,” control of current supply to motors. The thyristor—a rapid-action, high-power switch with which the “on” and “off” periods of each cycle can be fractionally varied—achieved smoothly graduated application of voltage to traction motors. Besides eliminating wear-prone parts and greatly improving an electric traction unit’s adhesion, thyristor control also reduced current consumption.
Three-phase alternating-current motor traction became practicable in the 1980s. With electronics it was possible to compress to manageable weight and size the complex equipment needed to transmute the overhead wire or third-rail current to a supply of variable voltage and frequency suitable for feeding to three-phase alternating-current motors. For railroad traction the alternating-current motor is preferable to a direct-current machine on several counts. It is an induction motor with a squirrel-cage rotor (that is, solid conductors in the slots are shorted together by end rings), and it has no commutators or brushes and no mechanically contacting parts except bearings, so that it is much simpler to maintain and more reliable. It is more compact than a direct motor, so more power is obtainable for a specified motor size and weight; the 6,000-kg (14,000-pound) alternating-current motor in each truck of a modern French National Railways electric locomotive delivers a continuous 3,750 horsepower.
The torque of an alternating-current motor increases with speed, whereas that of a direct-current motor is initially high and falls with rising speed; consequently, the alternating-current motor offers superior adhesion for acceleration of heavy trainloads. Finally, the alternating-current motor is more easily switched into a generating mode to act as a dynamic (rheostatic) or regenerative vehicle brake. (In dynamic braking the current generated to oppose the train’s momentum is dissipated through on-board resistances. In regenerative braking, adopted on mountain or intensively operated urban lines where the surplus current can be readily taken up by other trains, it is fed back into the overhead wire or third rail.) The drawbacks of three-phase alternating-current traction are the intricacy of the on-board electrical equipment needed to convert the current supply before it reaches the motors and its higher capital cost by comparison with direct-current motor systems.
A separate traction motor normally serves each axle via a suitably geared drive. For simplicity of final drive it was for many years standard practice to mount the traction motors on a locomotive’s axles. As train speeds rose, it became increasingly important to limit the impact on the track of unsprung masses. Now motors are either suspended within a locomotive’s trucks or, in the case of some high-speed units, suspended from the locomotive’s body and linked to the axles’ final drive gearboxes by flexible drive shafts.
The direct-current motor’s torque:speed characteristics make a locomotive designed for fast passenger trains, whether electric or diesel-electric, generally unsuitable for freight train work. The heavier loads of the latter require different gearing of the final drives—which will reduce maximum speed—and possibly an increase in the number of motored axles, for increased adhesion. But considerable mixed-traffic haulage capability is obtainable with three-phase alternating-current motors because of their superior adhesion characteristics.
Direct-current motor technology was employed in Japan’s first Shinkansen and France’s first Paris-Lyon TGV trains, but by the early 1990s three-phase alternating-current traction had been adopted for both Japanese and European very-high-speed train-sets—and by extension the systems around the world that have been derived from them. In Europe, international train operation without a locomotive change at frontiers is complicated by the railways’ historic adoption of different electrification systems, either 1,500 or 3,000 volts direct current or 25,000 volts 50 hertz or 15,000 volts 16 2/3 hertz alternating current. For instance, TGV-type trains could not operatie at full efficiency between London, Paris, and Brussels on the Eurostar line via the Channel Tunnel as long as they had to accommodate French 25,000-volt alternating-current overhead wire, Belgian 3,000-volt direct-current overhead wire, and British 750-volt third-rail supply. The French had perfected traction units capable of operating on more than one voltage system soon after they decided to adopt 25,000-volt alternating-current electrification in areas not wired at their previous 1,500-volt direct current. Nevertheless, where very-high-speed traction was concerned, it was impossible to contain within acceptable locomotive weight limits the equipment needed for equivalent high-power output under each system. Only after all the new high-speed lines were electrified on high-voltage alternating current was a true high-speed service available on the Eurostar line.
Since about 1980 the performance and economy of both electric and diesel traction unitshave been considerably advanced by the interposition between driving controls and vital components of microprocessors, which ensure that the components respond with maximum efficiency and that they are not inadvertently overtaxed. Another product of the application of electronics to controls is that in the modern electric locomotive the engine operator can set the train speed he wishes to reach or maintain, and the traction equipment will automatically apply or vary the appropriate power to the motors, taking account of train weight and track gradient. The microprocessors also serve a diagnostic function, continuously monitoring the state of the systems they control for signs of incipient or actual fault. The microprocessors are linked to a main on-board computer that instantly reports the nature and location of an actual or potential malfunction to a visual display in the driving cab, generally with advice for the cab crew on how it might be rectified or its effects temporarily mitigated. The cab display also indicates the effectiveness of the countermeasures taken. The computer automatically stores such data, either for downloading to maintenance staff at the journey’s end or, on a railroad equipped with train-to-ground-installation radio, for immediate transmission to a maintenance establishment so that preparations for repair of a fault are in place as soon as the traction unit ends its run. In newer very-high-speed, fixed-formation train-sets, a through-train fibre-optics transmission system concentrates data from the microprocessor controls—both those of passenger car systems, such as air-conditioning and power-operated entrance doors, and those of the rear locomotive or, in the Japanese Shinkansen train-sets, the traction equipment dispersed among a proportion of its cars.
Diesel traction
By the end of the 1960s, diesel had almost completely superseded steam as the standard railroad motive power on nonelectrified lines around the world. The change came first and most quickly in North America, where, during the 25 years 1935–60 (and especially in the period 1951–60), railroads in the United States completely replaced their steam locomotives.What caused the diesel to supersede the steam locomotive so rapidly was the pressure of competition from other modes of transport and the continuing rise in wage costs, which forced the railroads to improve their services and adopt every possible measure to increase operating efficiency. Compared with steam, the diesel traction unit had a number of major advantages:
1. It could operate for long periods with no lost time for maintenance; thus, in North America the diesel could operate through on a run of 3,200 km (2,000 miles) or more and then, after servicing, start the return trip. Steam locomotives required extensive servicing after only a few hours’ operation.
2. It used less fuel energy than a steam locomotive, for its thermal efficiency was about four times as great.
3. It could accelerate a train more rapidly and operate at higher sustained speeds with less damage to the track.
In addition, the diesel was superior to the steam locomotive because of its smoother acceleration, greater cleanliness, standardized repair parts, and operating flexibility (a number of diesel units could be combined and run by one operator under multiple-unit control).
The diesel-electric locomotive is, essentially, an electric locomotive that carries its own power plant. Its use, therefore, brings to a railroad some of the advantages of electrification, but without the capital cost of the power distribution and feed-wire system. As compared with an electric locomotive, however, the diesel-electric has an important drawback: since its output is essentially limited to that of its diesel engine, it can develop less horsepower per locomotive unit. Because high horsepower is required for high-speed operation, the diesel is, therefore, less desirable than the electric for high-speed passenger services and very fast freight operations.
Diesel development
Experiments with diesel-engine locomotives and railcars began almost as soon as the diesel engine was patented by the German engineer Rudolf Diesel in 1892. Attempts at building practical locomotives and railcars (for branch-line passenger runs) continued through the 1920s. The first successful diesel switch engine went into service in 1925; “road” locomotives were delivered to the Canadian National and New York Central railroads in 1928. The first really striking results with diesel traction were obtained in Germany in 1933. There, the Fliegende Hamburger, a two-car, streamlined, diesel-electric train, with two 400-horsepower engines, began running between Berlin and Hamburg on a schedule that averaged 124 km (77 miles) per hour. By 1939 most of Germany’s principal cities were interconnected by trains of this kind, scheduled to run at average speeds up to 134.1 km (83.3 miles) per hour between stops.The next step was to build a separate diesel-electric locomotive unit that could haul any train. In 1935 one such unit was delivered to the Baltimore and Ohio and two to the Santa Fe Railway Company. These were passenger units; the first road freight locomotive, a four-unit, 5,400-horsepower Electro-Motive Division, General Motors Corporation demonstrator, was not built until 1939.
By the end of World War II, the diesel locomotive had become a proven, standardized type of motive power, and it rapidly began to supersede the steam locomotive in North America. In the United States a fleet of 27,000 diesel locomotives proved fully capable of performing more transportation work than the 40,000 steam locomotives they replaced.
After World War II, the use of diesel traction greatly increased throughout the world, though the pace of conversion was generally slower than in the United States.
Elements of the diesel locomotive
Although the diesel engine has been vastly improved in power and performance, the basic principles remain the same: drawing air into the cylinder, compressing it so that its temperature is raised, and then injecting a small quantity of oil into the cylinder. The oil ignites without a spark because of the high temperature. The diesel engine may operate on the two-stroke or four-stroke cycle. Rated operating speeds vary from 350 to 2,000 revolutions per minute, and rated output may be from 10 to 4,000 horsepower. Railroads in the United States use engines in the 1,000-revolutions-per-minute range; in Europe and elsewhere, some manufacturers have favoured more compact engines of 1,500–2,000 revolutions per minute.Most yard-switching and short-haul locomotives are equipped with diesel engines ranging from 600 to 1,800 horsepower; road units commonly have engines ranging from 2,000 to 4,000 horsepower. Most builders use V-type engines, although in-line types are used on smaller locomotives and for underfloor fitment on railcars and multiple-unit train-sets.
The most commonly employed method of power transmission is electric, to convert the mechanical energy produced by the diesel engine to current for electric traction motors. Through most of the 20th century the universal method was to couple the diesel engine to a direct-current generator, from which, through appropriate controls, the current was fed to the motors. Beginning in the 1970s, the availability of compact semiconductor rectifiers enabled replacement of the direct-current generator by an alternator, which is able to produce more power and is less costly to maintain than an equivalent direct-current machine. For supply of series-wound direct-current traction motors, static rectifiers converted the three-phase alternating-current output of the alternator to direct current. Then in the 1980s European manufacturers began to adopt the three-phase alternating-current motor for diesel-electric traction units seeking advantages similar to those obtainable from this technology in electric traction. This requires the direct-current output from the rectifier to be transmuted by a thyristor-controlled inverter into athree-phase variable voltage and frequency supply for the alternating-current motors.
On some railroads with lightly laid track, generally those with narrow rail gauge, locomotives may still need nonmotored as well as motored axles for acceptable weight and bulk distribution. But the great majority of diesel-electric locomotives now have all axles powered.
Other types of transmissions also are used in diesel locomotives. The hydraulic transmission, which first became quite popular in Germany, is often favoured for diesel railcars and multiple-unit train-sets. It employs a centrifugal pump or impeller driving a turbine in a chamber filled with oil or a similar fluid. The pump, driven by the diesel engine, converts the engine power to kinetic energy in the oil impinging on the turbine blades. The faster the blades move, the less the relative impinging speed of the oil and the faster the locomotive moves.
Mechanical transmission is the simplest type; it is mainly used in very low-power switching locomotives and in low-power diesel railcars. Basically it is a clutch and gearbox similar to those used in automobiles. A hydraulic coupling, in some cases, is used in place of a friction clutch.
Types of diesel motive power
There are three broad classes of railroad equipment that use diesel engines as prime movers:1. The light passenger railcar or rail bus (up to 200 horsepower), which usually is four-wheeled and has mechanical transmission. It may be designed to haul a light trailer car. Use of such vehicles is very limited.
2. The four-axle passenger railcar (up to 750 horsepower), which can be operated independently, haul a nonpowered trailer, or be formed into a semipermanent train-set such as a multiple-unit with all or a proportion of the cars powered. In the powered cars the diesel engine and all associated traction equipment, including fuel tanks, are capable of fitting under the floor to free space above the frames for passenger seating. Transmission is either electric or hydraulic. Modern railcars and railcar train-sets are mostly equipped for multiple-unit train operation, with driving control from a single cab.
3. Locomotives (10 to 4,000 horsepower), which may have mechanical transmission if very low-powered or hydraulic transmission for outputs of up to about 2,000 horsepower but in most cases have electric transmission, the choice depending on power output and purpose.
A substantial increase of diesel engine power-to-weight ratios and the application of electronics to component control and diagnostic systems brought significant advances in the efficiency of diesel locomotives in the last quarter of the 20th century. In 1990 a diesel engine with a continuous rating of 3,500 horsepower was available at almost half the weight of a similar model in 1970. At the same time, the fuel efficiency of diesel engines was significantly improved.
Electronics have made a particularly important contribution to the load-hauling capability of diesel-electric locomotives in road freight work, by improving adhesion at starting or in grade-climbing. A locomotive accelerating from rest can develop from 33 to 50 percent more tractive force if its powered wheels are allowed to “creep” into a very slight, steady, and finely controlled slip. In a typical “creep control” system, Doppler radar mounted under the locomotive precisely measures true ground speed, against which microprocessors calculate the ideal creep speed limit in the prevailing track conditions and automatically regulate current supply to the traction motors. The process is continuous, so that current levels are immediately adjusted to match a change in track parameters. In the 1960s, North Americans considered that a diesel-electric locomotive of 3,000–3,600 horsepower or more must have six motored axles for effective adhesion: two railroads had acquired a small number of eight-motored-axle locomotives, each powered by two diesel engines, with outputs of 5,000–6,600 horsepower. Since the mid-1980s four-axle locomotives of up to 4,000 horsepower have become feasible and are widely employed in fast freight service (though for heavy freight duty six-axle locomotives were still preferred). But today a 4,000-horsepower rating is obtainable from a 16-cylinder diesel engine, whereas in the 1960s a 3,600-horsepower output demanded a 20-cylinder engine. This, coupled with the reduction in the number of locomotives required to haul a given tonnage due to improved adhesion, has been a key factor in decreasing locomotive maintenance costs.
Outside North America, widespread electrification all but ended production of diesel locomotives purpose-built for passenger train haulage in the 1960s. The last development for high-speed diesel service was on British Railways, which, for its nonelectrified trunk routes, mass-produced a semipermanent train-set, the InterCity 125, that had a 2,250-horsepower locomotive at each end of seven or eight intermediate cars. In 1987 one of these sets established a world speed record for diesel traction of 238 km (148 miles) per hour. Some InterCity 125 sets are expected to remain in service under various other designations until well into the 21st century. In North America, Amtrak in the United States and VIA in Canada, as well as some urban mass-transit authorities, still operate diesel locomotives exclusively on passenger trains. Elsewhere road haul diesel locomotives are designed either for exclusive freight haulage or for mixed passenger and freight work.
Traction operating methods
Multiple-unit connection and operation of locomotives, to adjust power to load and track gradient requirements, is standard practice in North America and is common elsewhere. Where considerable gradients occur or freight trains are unusually long and heavy, concentration of locomotives at a train’s head can strain couplings and undesirably delay transmission of full braking power to the train’s rearmost cars. In such conditions several railroads, principally in North America, employ crewless “slave” locomotives that are inserted partway down the train. Radio signals transmitted from the train’s leading locomotive cause the slave locomotive’s controls to respond automatically and correspondingly to all operations of the controls. A world record for freight train weight and length was set in August 1989 on South Africa’s electrified, 830-km (516-mile), 1,065-mm (3-foot 6-inch) gauge Sishen-Saldanha ore line. In the course of research into the feasibility of increasing the line’s regular trainloads, a 660-car train grossing 71,600 tons and 7.2 km (4.47 miles) long was run from end to end of the route. Power was furnished by five 5,025-horsepower electric locomotives at the front, four more inserted after the 470th freight car, and at the rear, to avoid overtaxing the traction current supply system, seven 2,900-horsepower diesel locomotives.After World War II easy directional reversibility of passenger train-sets became increasingly important for intensively operated short- and medium-haul services, to reduce terminal turnround times and minimize the number of train-sets needed to provide the service. The most popular medium has been the self-powered railcar or multiple-unit train-set, with a driving cab at each end, so that reversal requires only that the crew change cabs. An alternative, known as push-pull, has a normal locomotive at one end and, at the other, a nonpowered passenger or baggage car, known as the driving or control trailer, with a driving cab at its extremity. In one direction the locomotive pulls the train; in the other, unmanned, it propels the train, driven via through-train wiring from the control trailer’s cab. A potential operating advantage of push-pull as opposed to use of self-powered train-sets on a railroad running both passenger and freight trains is that at night, when passenger operation has ceased, the locomotives can be detached for freight haulage.
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