Scottish engineer Scott Russell told how in 1868 he faced the problem of establishing a ferry boat service in Lake Constance: "I said to myself: they want me to continue the railway across the lake, and the best that I can do is to take a piece of the station, put a train on it and send it from one shore of the lake to the other, and so the train will be able to continue. Thus, I took a portion of the station of 6 x 60 meters in size and installed on it two tracks capable of holding one train each. Then I had to think of making it to float. This was quite easy; I only had to put under the tracks the hull of a ship... Then I had to make the floater to move, so I installed a machine along with its boilers on each side of the ship. As propulsion system I chose a paddle-wheel..."
French locomotive built in 1883, capable of towing convoys of 200-250 tonnes.
Just the other way around, Canadian engineer Henry G. Ketchum devised in 1880 the idea of transporting whole ships tied to wagons to overcome an isthmus. This strange railway should be able to transport ships with a displacement of up to 2000 tonnes by means of mobile platforms fitted with 80 wheels. Another project consisted of a railway between Maniatitán, in the Atlantic, and Tehuantepec, in the Pacific, covering a distance of 255 kilometers. In this project the platforms should be fitted with 1500 wheels and a number of side supports, firmly tied by means of presses or hydraulic plungers to avoid dangerous oscillations. The expected duration of the travel for this strange convoy, dragged and pushed by six locomotives, was 16 hours. But all of these ideas stayed only in papers.
The origins of electric locomotion
In 1846, the Italian engineer Alessandro Bossolo was busy in his study along with the German physicist Franz Loeber, discussing about the experiment effectuated by Scottish engineer Robert Davidson with a machine weighing five tonnes in the railway Edinburgh-Glasgow, and about the possibility of using electric energy for the purpose of locomotion. Loeber mentioned the project by Henry Pincus of conducting electricity through the rails. Bossolo recognized that the idea was magnificent and added that he would add a third wheel for the exclusive purpose of passing the electricity to the engines of the locomotive. Loeber replied that such system would be a constant danger for the persons. But Bossolo said that it would be enough to use a cover of insulating wood in those points used by persons to cross the railway, or to interrupt the electric flow in such points, keeping the electric contact between the two sections by means of an underground cable. The problem was that until then no suitable source of electricity had been found. But it would be just a matter of time to achieve it.
In 1879 the German inventor Werner von Siemens, one of the three Berlinese brothers famous thanks to their contributions to the field of physics, built a small locomotive of only 3 horsepower, capable of running at seven kilometers per hour, which was presented in the Industrial Exposition of Berlin. The contact line was formed by a third wheel fed by an electric dynamo, a device which was one of the specialities from Siemens. Such small locomotive, with the machinist sitting directly on top of it, resembled more a toy locomotive from a Luna Park than a model of a scientific exposition. Arrived to this point, we could ask ourselves why the engineers decided to seek a new form of energy to move the trains in a time when steam locomotion was already giving its best results. The answer to this question comes from one of the pioneers of electric locomotion, the American inventor Frank Julian Sprague.
Sprague thought that electricity should replace steam for the propulsion of the locomotives operating inside mines, where the smoke and gases contaminated the air, making it unbreathable and harmful for the lungs. Because of this, he built in 1880 an electric railway for one of the mining galleries that were becoming very numerous, specially in California and Virginia. The utility and performance of the new line were so evident that in few years steam locomotion started to be replaced by electrical locomotion in the mines. Also in 1880, in France, a laundry company started to make use of electric trains to gather the sheets from the fields in which they were whitened, because a steam locomotive would have spread cinder.
In view of the technical, hygienic and economic advantages of the electrification in the mining railways, a deputy from Maryland proposed to do the same for the railway line that passed through the Baltimore Tunnel, in Chesapeake Bay. The proposal was well accepted and thus it was ordered from the General Electric Company the construction of a suitable locomotive, which would enter service in the late 1895. The locomotive, fitted with four 360-horsepower motors, had the electricity intake through a third wheel and weighed 96 tonnes. Electric traction soon took possession of the metropolitan lines and the suburban railways, but more years would have to pass until it became a true locomotion force in long routes.
The Italians were the pioneers in the electrification of long lines; they promoted since 1897 a special committee for studying the electric traction in the railways and for the construction of electric locomotives, either for passenger or freight trains. The first attempts were made in 1900, in the lines of the Valtellina, connecting Lecco and Sondrio, with a total length of 106 kilometers, in which the electricity (three-phase alternating current) was supplied by means of overhead cables. In 1902, in the line connecting Milan and Varese, with a total length of 60 kilometers, it was used instead a third rail which supplied direct current. In any case, the results were even better than initially expected.
One of the first electric cars of the Varesine lines.
One of the first electric locomotives fitted with electricity intake through the third wheel.