The Historical Development of the Electric Train - Essay Example

Electricity is used as a substitute to provide power hence eliminating smoke and taking advantage of the high efficiency of electric motors. This paper seeks to describe the historical development of the electric train in the world of technology. In 1879, Werner von Siemens who was a German engineer presented the first practical passenger train at Berlin which used electricity to operate. In the same year, the first electric railway was demonstrated at the Berlin Trades Fair. The locomotive was driven by approximately a power of 2.

2 KW series wound motor and the train which consisted of the locomotive and three cars. This locomotive could reach a maximum speed of 13 km/h. In 1881, the world’s first public electric tram line was opened in Berlin, Germany, and it was named Gross- Lichterfelde Tramway. It was built by Werner von Siemens. In 1883, Modling and Hinterbruh Tram opened near Vienna in Austria as the first electric tram line. This tramline used electricity served from an overhead line to operate. Also in 1883, Volk’s electric railway was opened in Brighton, Britain. . This line opened in 1890, using electric locomotives which were built by Mather and Platt.

In fact, electricity grew quickly and became the power supply of choice for subways, which were assisted by the Sprague’s invention of the multi- unit train control in the year 1897. The surface and the elevated transit systems used steam until they were forced to convert by the law. The first and foremost electrification on the mainline was actually on a four- mile stretch of the Baltimore Belt Line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) in 1895. This track was very crucial in connecting the main portion of the B&O to the newly built line to the New York and it required a series if tunnels around the edges of Baltimore’s downtown.

Smoke from steam locomotives was becoming a nuisance on the Pennsylvania Railroad. Railroad entrances to New York City required tunnels and hence smoke problems were becoming worse. A collision in the Park Avenue tunnel in 1902 led to the New York State legislature to outlaw the using of smoke producing locomotives after 1908. Consequently, electric locomotives began to operate in 1904 in the New York central Railroad. In 1930s, the Pennsylvania Railroad, which had actually introduced the use of electric locomotives because of the law, electrified its entire territory east of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

The Chicago, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad which was the last transcontinental line to be built, electrified the lines across the Rocky Mountains and to the Pacific Ocean beginning in 1915. The East Coast lines such as the Virginia Railway, the Norfolk and the Western Railway found it useful to electrify short sections of the mountain crossings.