Diesel Electric Locomotive Propulsion Systems-A Look into the Future

The demand for increased productivity in train operation has been the driving force in creating today's energy-efficient high-horsepower diesel electric locomotives. A key in obtaining this productivity improvement has been the evolution of the electric transmission that has allowed the locomotive's effective tractive effort to increase along with its diesel engine horsepower. A means of correlating the relative efficiency, reliability, performance, size, and weight of the available propulsion technologies and control strategies is developed, along with trade-offs in applying these technologies and strategies to locomotives now and in the future. Both dc and the various types of ac propulsion technologies are included. How the basic strategy of individual axle control or total locomotive control (for both dc and ac technologies) relates to locomotive productivity is covered along with variations such as power equipment staging in the overall optimization process.