Railway Electrification: a Complete Survey of the Economics of the Different Systems of Railway Electrification from the Engineering and Financial Points of View

Abstract

THIS book gives a survey of the economics of the different systems of railway electrification from the engineering point of view. It is pointed out that for the last thirty years electricity has been successfully employed all over the world to operate tramways. At the beginning of the century it was adopted for elevated and tube railways. Then came the electrification of the suburban railways, and finally, mainly on the Continent and in the United States, the electrification of the main line railways. It is universally admitted that electrification of the main line railways in Great Britain is feasible; the only question about which opinions still differ is the financial one. Were it not for the War, at least two British main lines would have been rapidly extending their systems of electrification. Apparently they have adopted a policy of waiting, and so we are continuing to burn an unnecessary quantity of coal. Many who have considered the problem with great care are in favour of electrification. This book is written for engineers and contains much valuable data from the point of view of the economics of the problem, but we think that the author could have made out a stronger case for electrification. There are not many cases-we know of none-where a railway once electrified has gone back to steam locomotives, but we do know that the electrical staff on most of the English railways is in ludicrous disproportion to the mechanical engineering staff. In Chapter ii. the author states that it can be proved mathematically that the best site for a power house from the point of view of transmission costs is the centre of gravity of the load. This theorem has been recently proved to be erroneous. It requires the unwarrantable assumption that the percentage loss of power in the minimum case is the same for all the distributing mains.

Railway Electrification: a Complete Survey of the Economics of the Different Systems of Railway Electrification from the Engineering and Financial Points of View.

Prof.

H. F.

Trewman

By. (The Specialists' Series.) Pp. xii + 244. (London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, Ltd., 1924.) 25s. net.