Saturday, April 27, 2024

Westinghouse electric locomotive demonstration train, 1905


The Westinghouse Company's exhibits at the International Railway Congress, Washington, 1905. with a fifty-car train, and the track exhibition included also train collisions at comparatively high speeds arranged to demonstrate the great capacity of the Westinghouse friction draft gear in absorbing and dissipating the shocks of impact and reaction. 

The electric locomotive exhibited was at that stage the most powerful ever constructed to take current from an overhead wire, and the first alternating current locomotive built for use in America. It was divided into halves, designed for separate operation separately if desired, each half equipped with three 225 hp motors. With the motors at nominal full load, the drawbar pull at ten miles per hour [16 km/h] was 50,000 pounds [23 tonnes], but dynamometer tests in hauling the fifty-car train, weighing unladen  2,250,000 pounds, developed on several occasions a steady drawbar pull of from 60,000 to 65,000 pounds, and momentary efforts as high as 100,000 pounds without slipping wheels. It was operated from a trolley circuit of 6600 volts, the reduced motor voltage being variable. 

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