An early breakthrough in railway electrification

The Hungarian engineering genius Dr. Kalman Kando was the first to create a railway-electrification system working at utility frequency and integrated into a public utility system. The key to his system was a locomotive on which a synchronous phase convertor changed the single-phase contact-wire energy to the polyphase-induction-traction-motor energy. The synchronous machine could run with unity power factor. The locomotives had a constant efficiency of 83% and regenerative braking. Three sections of the single-phase railway line took the three phases of the utility network. The Hungarian railway electrification based on Kando's system was started with strong British support, and two of Britain's largest manufacturers, Metropolitan-Vickers and English Electric, supplied a substantial part of the equipment.