All Articles Tagged 'electric' (11)

This Sunday, our streamliner is small, electric-powered and not too fast.

The EF55 class consisted of three locomotives built in 1936 by Hitachi, Kawasaki, and Tōyō Electric in Japan. They had 2Co+Co1 wheel arrangement and were originally intended to haul limited express trains on the narrow gauge (1067mm,…

This shot was taken more than two decades ago:

The trainsets don't look outdated even today. But they were built before WWII. In the 1930s the Italian state railways, Ferrovie dello Stato, electrified the main line Milan-Bologna-Florence-Rome-Naples and needed a fast train to use on it and on other newly-electrified lines. The ETR 200 project was…

No huge locos and mighty diesels today. Just some trams from Blackpool, Lancashire, UK.

Commissioned in 1933 by Walter Luff, the controller of the network, in a bid to modernise the tramway's fleet, the Balloons were intended to replace the Dreadnought cars that had been in service since the opening of the tramway. They were built by English Electric during 1934 and 1935,…

Internal combustion engine + electric motor. 111 years old.

Ferdinand Porsche built the first standard hybrid power unit in 1900 for k.u.k. Hofwagenfabrik Ludwig Lohner & Co., a firm of coachmakers in Vienna. His Lohner Porsche ‘Semper Vivus’ featured two combustion engines and an electric hub motor, and could store energy in a battery.…

Light, articulated and fast, they looked fantastic, straight from the brave new world.

Tom aka Railfan 45 recalls his childhood impression of an Electroliner: "I remeber this trainset as a very young boy of about 3 or 4 years old. I thought it was a rocketship. I was in the loop waiting for an L with my parents when it…

Today, something modern for a change.

Modern, but not too hot, rather lukewarm - last year's news. I wonder why our German friends (and we've got some!) didn't bother to tell us about this loco when it was hot. Well, it's better later than never.

To commemorate the 175th anniversary of…

Ironically, they were much more important than steam locos and diesel units. As a matter of fact, the Deutsche Reichsbahn Gesellschaft (German State Railroad Company) preferred electric motive power more and more for express passenger service. In 1937, 2 each…

For any dedicated museum-crawler, the capital of Austria is a true paradise.

Art museums of any kind you like, Military Museum, Technical Museum, world's only Globes Museum... and the Tramway Museum in an old brownstone shed, just five minutes walk from Schlachthausgasse subway station.

In the courtyard there are historic tramcars ready for a sightseeing tour:…

The PRR GG1 is a class of electric locomotives that was built for the Pennsylvania Railroad for use in the northeastern United States.

The GG1 was designed by the Pennsylvania Railroad based on the need for a locomotive that could pull more than 12 to 14 passenger cars. The railroad thought it had designed the perfect electric passenger locomotive, the P-5a (shown below), but as the P-5a…

In 1930s, the Swiss Federal Railroad (SBB) decided to build the most unusual "flagship" - high-speed electric motor twin carriage. In 1938, two carriages of the SBB CLe 2/4 class (dubbed Roter Pfeil in German, i. e. "Red Arrow", also known as Fleche de Jura, i. e. "Jurassic Arrow") were rebuilt into…

Once upon a time, the internal combustion engine had a powerful rival - the electricity. Since 1865, electric-powered vehicles were designed and built in Europe and America.

An electric car in the conventional sense, Wiki tells us, was not developed until 1890 or 1891, by William Morrison of Des Moines, Iowa; the vehicle was a…