The modern electric mine locomotive

The day of the small mine with small equipment is passing, and in the future most of the bituminous coal mining will be accomplished in larger mines using heavy equipment. The demand for larger capacity in equipment has been increasing rapidly of late, and owing to the restricted space available for the equipment on a mine locomotive, difficulty is being experienced in designing equipment to meet the conditions. A possible solution of the problem is in providing forced ventilation for the motors which are of a type that require very little ventilation to produce a large increase in the continuous rating. This scheme has been tried out on a large locomotive and the results indicate that forced ventilation will play a prominent part in meeting the extreme severe conditions that are frequently arising in the mine locomotive field.