Performance of electric locomotives

UNTIL the general adoption of the diesel-electric locomotive within the past 15 years almost all railroad men considered that an electric locomotive was one whose power is generated in a stationary power plant and transmitted to the locomotive by means of a trolley wire or third rail. This limited conception has changed with the growing realization that the most important operating characteristics of diesel-electric locomotives are due to the electrical transmission of power from the prime mover to the wheels, and that nearly all of these same characteristics are to be found in any electric locomotive, such as the trolley- or third-rail-electric, the steam-turbine-electric, the gas-turbine-electric, or the storage-battery-electric locomotive.