Physical Science, Measurement and Instrumentation, Management and Education, IEE Proceedings A

The technical potential of mainline electric railways was recognised in the 1890s, but general use of electric traction outside rapid-transit networks was discouraged by low thermal efficiency of power stations, and high construction costs. The locomotive-electric system was suggested as a way of obtaining cheap electrification without expensive fixed works, and early experiments using steam engines, and steam turbines, led to proposals for dual-mode working; partial electrification, and what are today termed high-productivity integral trains. The coal-fired locomotive-electric system failed, the last attempt being by Ramsay in 1922, but a successful locomotive-electric system using oil engines became well established in the USA by the late 1930s, and is now universal. Post-1960 developments to the stationary-electric system have made the electric mainline railway a strategic technology, and have restored to the railway industry much of the status lost in the previous 50 years. The stationary-electric and locomotive-electric systems can be regarded as subunits of a single integrated traction system, which would reach the acme of development in the dual-mode integral trains suggested for working container freight throughout the European system. This modern version of a 19th century idea remains an outline proposal only at the present time.<>