Electric Railways and Tramways, their Construction and Operation
A Practical Handbook

This highly illustrated 1897 handbook by a leading electrical engineer offers unique insights into the earliest days of electric locomotion.

Philip Dawson (Author)

9781108060950, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 June 2013

754 pages, 503 b/w illus.
29.7 x 21 x 3.8 cm, 1.77 kg

One of the world's leading electrical engineers and involved in projects across the globe, Sir Philip Dawson (1866–1938) was at the forefront of the new technology of electric locomotion. Published in 1897, less than twenty years after the first successful demonstration of an electric passenger locomotive and just seven years after the opening of London's first electrified underground line, this handbook covers all aspects of the building and running of a successful electric railway, ranging from the construction of the permanent way and different means of delivering current through to financial accounting, staff organisation and discipline. Impressed by the speed of American progress, Dawson is keen to impress upon his reader the need for Europe to keep up. With some 500 illustrations, this work offers a uniquely revealing picture of the earliest days of a technology that is now taken for granted.

Note
1. Introductory and general
2. Permanent way
3. The return circuit
4. The return circuit (cont.)
5. Elevated conductor construction
6. Erection of the trolley wire
7. Erection of the trolley wire (cont.)
8. Motors
9. Speed regulators
10. Car wiring and equipment
11. Motor trucks
12. Car construction
13. Car wheels and brakes
14. The trolley
15. The power house
16. Generators
17. Switchboards
18. Central stations
19. The West End Street Railway Company of Boston, Mass., USA
20. Chicago City Railway
21. City and Suburban Railway Company, Baltimore
22. Long distance power transmissions
23. Electric railway locomotives
24. Electric main line railways
25. British electric railways
26. Combined light and power plant
27. Open conduit systems
28. Surface contact systems
29. Storage batteries as applied to traction purposes
30. Specifications
31. Accounts and their classification
32. The management of electric lines
33. Organisation, discipline and rules
34. Efficiency, maintenance and depreciation
35. Statistics and working expenses
Appendix
Index.

Subject Areas: Civil engineering, surveying & building [TN]