How Intercity Railways Learned from Metros: Part 3

Electric Traction

The development of electric traction for railways started seriously in the 1880s. Before this time, it was confined to a range of experimental schemes that were largely unsuccessful. The driver behind the development of electricity as a prime mover for rail vehicles was the need to improve urban systems, specifically streetcar or tramway operations. These were using horses. Horses were (are) expensive to keep, you needed three pairs a day for each vehicle you operated and they produced a lot of waste. In London alone, over 400 tons of manure was produced each day by horses in the late 19th century and it all had to be collected and disposed of. 

However, electrifying the horse-drawn tramways was expensive. You had to build your own power station because there was no national grid in those days, you had to provide a system of supply along the line, usually an overhead wire and you needed to buy new vehicles, complete with electric motors and the associated control equipment. But this expense could be justified if there were enough people using the system and, in the developing urban context, there were. Cities were expanding rapidly, suburbs were being built around them and people needed to get from them to their work and back each day. The urban railway had arrived. 

Figure 5: Richmond Union Passenger Railway Company showing off one of their original electric street cars introduced in 1888. The trolley pole on the roof of the car connected to an overhead line carrying the electrical supply to the the controller at the car end and thence to the motors under the floor. The return circuit was made through the running rails at zero volts. The driver or 'motorman' is at the right hand end and the conductor at the rear. Photo: Collection of: Frank J Sprague papers, OVERSIZE PHOTOGRAPHS. Image ID: 5665668

Electric Streetcars

The first successful electric tramway was opened in Richmond, Virginia in 1888. The engineer was Frank J. Sprague, a former US naval officer who believed in the future of electricity as a means of powering railways. His Richmond streetcar (Figure 5) carried 40 passengers and a crew of two. Controls were provided at both ends of the car so that, at the terminals, to change direction, the crew merely swapped ends. 

As urban tramways spread across the US and were introduced into Europe and other big cities around the world, increased patronage drove moves to increase capacity by lengthening a single street car into a train. The leading car was powered but it could drag additional, unpowered cars behind it.  But (isn't there always a 'but'?), with this, the terminal problem of the trapped motive power returned and powered cars had to be exchanged at terminals in the same way as the locomotives we saw in Part 2 of this series. Some lines had loops built to avoid the terminal swapping.

Then, in 1897 in America, our Mr. Sprague demonstrated an electric train using multiple unit control.  This trial was for one of Chicago's elevated railroads - a network of steam powered urban lines - and he was trying to persuade them to adopt electric traction. Part 4 of this series explains how it worked and what happed next.

How Intercity Railways Learned from Metros: Part 2

Developing Turnrounds

As terminal operations developed over the years, the methods for turning round trains improved. It became common at the larger terminals to provide locomotive sidings at the departure end of the station (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Terminal operation using two locomotives for a quick turnround. The arriving train has its locomotive trapped at the inner end of the platform track. The locomotive is uncoupled from the train and then waits for its removal. At the same time, the departure locomotive is moved from a loco siding at the departure end of the platform onto the train. It is then coupled to the train to make ready to take it away. Once the train has left, the arriving locomotive will move up the platform into the loco siding, where it will become the departure locomotive for the next train.

The process of using two locomotives in this way allowed rapid locomotive changeover and platform clearance, particularly important for busy terminal stations. And, it was made much easier when steam was eliminated and the locomotives became diesel or electric. Now, platform clearance times were largely regulated by the ability to unload and reload trains quickly.

The next development we look at is in Part 3 and it covers the adoption of electric traction and multiple-unit control.

Great British Cuts

UK Railway Finance

It is instructive to see that the newly appointed chairman of Great British Railways, Sir John Kingman, is a former Treasury mandarin. This does not bode well for railway support. This is a clear signal that the government sees the railways as too expensive and ripe for cuts in financial support. Sir John is sharpening his axe as we speak.

Few of the passengers who ride the trains every day think about how much the government has to spend on keeping the railways going. All they think about is the cost of the fare. They think that fares are too expensive and that they'd be better off using the car. However, despite the cost of fares, every year the British government spends about £12 billion on keeping the UK Railway system going. This is more than half of the total railway income of £25.9 billion.

Right: A UK railway finance chart as provided by the British government showing the totals of expenditure for the period of 2024 to 2025, the latest figures available. Information from UK Office of Rail and Road (ORR).

 

Cuts

Of course, the railways haven't helped themselves. Network Rail, the UK railway infrastructure manager, didn't manage to spend all the money that they've been provided by the government in the last financial 'control' period. They under spent it by 12%. They are also very big, very slow and very expensive. They are generally just like any other government department. 

I was once told that any time you ask anyone in Network Rail a question, the first answer is always 'No'. That needs to change. Management needs to be sharper, leaner and more responsive. Project management and contractor management night be the first places to look, Sir John.

The Future

Whatever this government decides to do in the short term, what the railway really needs is a long-term cross party approach. Railway assets invariably last from 20 to 60 years so their management and renewal programmes needs to match this. The only way to do this is to have a long-term plan for renewals, replacements and upgrades. The plan needs to be agreed by all the government parties and it should be stitched into the UK's railway financing plans for at least a 40 year period. This would require a huge change in attitude but it really is essential to replace the existing feast and famine process that makes the railway so expensive.