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Interurban Electric Locomotives From General Electric By Joseph Strapac Soft Cov
Interurban Electric Locomotives From General Electric By Joseph A. Strapac Relection from lights on come photos.
Softbound
128 Pages
Copyright 2004
Contents
Chapter Subject
1Introduction
Freedom from the Trolley Wire
2The Pioneers, 1893-1906
Exports to England and France
3Built by Alco, 1906-1913
4Boxcabs
5Articulated Trucks
GE's Best Customer
6Arch-Bar Trucks
7Built by Erie, 1913-1936
8Inside-Frame Trucks
9Four-Wheelers
10Post-1936: New Outlines
11Latin America
12Numeric Production List
Chapter One
Introduction
The manufacture and sales of interurban electric locomotives represented a tiny slice of General Electric's corporate income in any one year; even in the best of years (1906 to 1912), no more than a dozen of these little locomotives passed through the factory doors at GE on their way to commercial employment. Interurban railways-the potential customers-were typically undercapitalized and under-engineered and underbuilt and often had no interchange of freight cars with connecting steam railroads, so commercially-built steel locomotives were low on their wish lists.
The market for this class of equipment, to put it charitably, was "soft." However, the product itself was rugged and reliable, often outlasting the corporation that initially ordered the locomotive. Electric locomotives documented in these pages routinely served for forty or even fifty years, with some working longer than that. Some are reported to be working to this day (summer 2004).
General Electric was in the electric power business. GE lighted cities and powered entire street railway systems. GE traction motors and control systems, sold to commercial carbuilders and interurban company shops, powered streetcars and interurban cars and delivered a useful return on investment. The transportation equipment business could not have survived on locomotives alone.
This book, then, focuses in almost microscopically on this one phase of General Electric's business portfolio for the years 1893-1955. In these pages we will examine the production-primarily for domestic and Canadian operators-of electric locomotives weighing between ten tons and about eighty-five tons. Only the smallest of the
articulated-truck open-pit mining locomotives are included in these pages. Discussion of exports is limited as well; in a few cases those exports are amply documented, while in others, almost nothing is known for certain. Readers will find in these pages at least a cursory discussion of exports to Western Europe and to Latin America, but virtually nothing on exports to Asia.
As was the case with most non-steam locomotive builders, the concept of a "model" or even a "class" was foreign to GE management. The author, therefore, applied some arbitrary standards in dividing this material into useable chapters. Physical appearance, rather than electrical specifications, defines the divisions used in this book-all the boxcabs are in one chapter, for instance.
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