A locomotive or engine is a rail transport vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. If a locomotive is capable of carrying a payload, it is usually rather referred to as a multiple unit, motor coach, railcar or power car; the use of these self-propelled vehicles is increasingly common for passenger trains, but rare for freight trains.
Traditionally, locomotives pulled trains from the front. However, push-pull operation has become common, where the train may have a locomotive (or locomotives) at the front, at the rear, or at each end. Most recently railroads have begun adopting DPU or distributed power. The front may have one or two locomotives followed by a mid-train locomotive that is controlled remotely from the lead unit.
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The word locomotive originates from the Latin loco 'from a place', ablative of locus 'place', and the Medieval Latin motivus 'causing motion', and is a shortened form of the term locomotive engine,[1] which was first used in 1814[2] to distinguish between self-propelled and stationary steam engines.
Prior to locomotives, the motive force for railways had been generated by various lower-technology methods such as human power, horse power, gravity or stationary engines that drove cable systems. Few such systems are still in existence today. Locomotives may generate their power from fuel (wood, coal, petroleum or natural gas), or they may take power from an outside source of electricity. It is common to classify locomotives by their source of energy. The common ones include:
The first full-scale working railway steam locomotive was built by Richard Trevithick in 1802. It was constructed for the Coalbrookdale ironworks in Shropshire in England though no record of it working there has survived.[3] On 21 February 1804, the first recorded steam-hauled railway journey took place as another of Trevithick's locomotives hauled a train from the Penydarren ironworks, in Merthyr Tydfil, to Abercynon in South Wales.[4][5] Accompanied by Andrew Vivian, it ran with mixed success.[6] The design incorporated a number of important innovations including the use of high-pressure steam which reduced the weight of the engine and increased its efficiency.
The steam locomotive remained by far the most common type of locomotive until after World War II.[11] Steam locomotives are less efficient than modern diesel and electric locomotives, and a significantly larger workforce is required to operate and service them.[12] British Rail figures showed that the cost of crewing and fuelling a steam locomotive was about two and a half times larger than the cost of supporting an equivalent diesel locomotive, and the daily mileage they could run was lower.[citation needed] Between about 1950 and 1970, the majority of steam locomotives were retired from commercial service and replaced with electric and diesel-electric locomotives.[13][14] While North America transitioned from steam during the 1950s, and continental Europe by the 1970s, in other parts of the world, the transition happened later. Steam was a familiar technology that used widely-available fuels and in low-wage economies did not suffer as wide a cost disparity. It continued to be used in many countries until the end of the 20th century. By the end of the 20th century, almost the only steam power remaining in regular use around the world was on heritage railways.
Internal combustion locomotives use an internal combustion engine, connected to the driving wheels by a transmission. Typically they keep the engine running at a near-constant speed whether the locomotive is stationary or moving. Internal combustion locomotives are categorised by their fuel type and sub-categorised by their transmission type.
Benzene locomotives have an internal combustion engines that use benzene as fuel. Between the late 1890's and 1900's, a number of commercial manufacturers for Benzene Locomotives had been operating. This began with Deutz, that produced an operating system based upon a design prototype for a manganese mine in Giessen. Following, in the early 1900's, they had been sold for multiple mining and Tunnelling operations. Post the 1900's, no wide spread use was necessary or required, their inadequacy had increased with the existence of petrol and diesel locomotives.
Kerosene locomotives use kerosene as the fuel. They were the world's first internal combustion locomotives, preceding diesel and other oil locomotives by some years. The first known kerosene rail vehicle was a draisine built by Gottlieb Daimler in 1887,[15] but this was not technically a locomotive as it carried a payload.
A kerosene locomotive was built in 1894 by the Priestman Brothers of Kingston upon Hull for use on Hull docks. This locomotive was built using a 12 hp double-acting marine type engine, running at 300 rpm, mounted on a 4-wheel wagon chassis. It was only able to haul one loaded wagon at a time, due to its low power output, and was not a great success.[16] The first successful kerosene locomotive was "Lachesis" built by Richard Hornsby & Sons and delivered to Woolwich Arsenal Railway in 1896. The company built four kerosene locomotives between 1896 and 1903, for use at the Arsenal.
Petrol locomotives (US: gasoline locomotives) use petrol (gasoline) as their fuel. The first commercially successful petrol locomotive was a petrol-mechanical locomotive built by the Maudslay Motor Company in 1902, for the Deptford Cattle Market in London. It was an 80 hp locomotive using a 3-cylinder vertical petrol engine, with a two speed mechanical gearbox.
The most common type of petrol locomotive are petrol-mechanical locomotives, which use mechanical transmission in the form of gearboxes (sometimes in conjunction with chain drives) to deliver the power output of the engine to the driving wheels, in the same way as a car. The second petrol-mechanical locomotive was built by F.C. Blake of Kew in January 1903 for the Richmond Main Sewerage Board.[17][18][16]
Petrol-electric locomotives are petrol locomotives which use electric transmission to deliver the power output of the engine to the driving wheels. This avoids the need for gearboxes by converting the rotary mechanical force of the engine into electrical energy by a dynamo, and then powering the wheels by multi-speed electric traction motors. This allows for smoother acceleration, as it avoids the need for gear changes, however, it is more expensive, heavier, and sometimes bulkier than mechanical transmission.
A notable early petrol-electric locomotive was built in 1913 for the Minneapolis, St. Paul, Rochester and Dubuque Electric Traction Company. It weighed 60 tons, generated 350 hp and drove through a pair of bogies in a Bo-Bo arrangement.[19][20]
Diesel locomotives are powered by diesel engines. In the early days of diesel propulsion development, various transmission systems were employed with varying degrees of success, with electric transmission proving to be the most popular.
The main worldwide user of main-line hydraulic transmission locomotives was Deutsche Bundesbahn, with designs including the DB Class V 200 and the DB V 160 family. British Rail introduced a number of diesel hydraulic designs during its 1955 Modernisation Plan: initially licence-built versions of German designs. In Spain, Renfe used high power-to-weight ratio twin-engined German designs to haul high-speed trains from the 1960s to 1990s (see Renfe Classes 340, 350, 352, 353, 354).
Hydrostatic drive systems have also been applied to rail use, for example 350 to 750 hp (260 to 560 kW) shunting locomotives by CMI Group (Belgium).[25] Hydrostatic drives are also used in railway maintenance machines such as tampers and rail grinders.[26]
A gas turbine locomotive is an internal combustion engine locomotive consisting of a gas turbine. ICE engines require a transmission to power the wheels. The engine must be allowed to continue to run when the locomotive is stopped.
Gas turbine-mechanical locomotives use a mechanical transmission to deliver the power output of gas turbines to the wheels. A gas turbine locomotive was patented in 1861 by Marc Antoine Francois Mennons (British patent no. 1633).[27] There is no evidence that the locomotive was actually built but the design includes the essential features of gas turbine locomotives, including compressor, combustion chamber, turbine and air pre-heater. In 1952, Renault delivered a prototype four-axle 1150 hp gas-turbine-mechanical locomotive fitted with the Pescara "free turbine" gas- and compressed-air producing system, rather than a co-axial multi-stage compressor integral to the turbine. This model was succeeded by a pair of six-axle 2400 hp locomotives with two turbines and Pescara feeds in 1959. Several similar locomotives were built in USSR by Kharkov Locomotive Works.[28]
A gas turbine offers some advantages over a piston engine. There are few moving parts, decreasing the need for lubrication and potentially reducing maintenance costs, and the power-to-weight ratio is much higher. A turbine of a given power output is also physically smaller than an equally powerful piston engine, allowing a locomotive to be very powerful without being inordinately large. However, a turbine's power output and efficiency both drop dramatically with rotational speed, unlike a piston engine, which has a comparatively flat power curve. This makes GTEL systems useful primarily for long-distance high-speed runs. Additional problems with gas turbine-electric locomotives included that they were very noisy.[30]
An electric locomotive is a locomotive powered only by electricity. Electricity is supplied to moving trains with a (nearly) continuous conductor running along the track that usually takes one of three forms: an overhead line, suspended from poles or towers along the track or from structure or tunnel ceilings; a third rail mounted at track level; or an onboard battery. Both overhead wire and third-rail systems usually use the running rails as the return conductor but some systems use a separate fourth rail for this purpose. The type of electrical power used is either direct current (DC) or alternating current (AC). 152ee80cbc
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