Abstract
ONE of the main purposes of a railway is to transport the products of industry from the place where they are produced to the place where they are consumed. In passenger transportation, a service is performed in conveying the passenger from his starting point to his destination. To serve the needs of a country, a certain number of units of transportation (measured in ton-miles and passenger miles) must be produced every year by the transport system. A discussion of this problem is given by Mr. A. M. Wright in a paper published in the Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers of December. The principal competitors of the electric tractor are the steam locomotive and the oil-electric tractor. It has to be remembered that it is not sufficient for a transport system to be capable of producing a given number of ton-miles a year. It is often essential that the units of transportation be produced very rapidly. To take advantage of the superior performance of electric tractors, large capital expenditure for track equipment and substations is required.
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Steam, Oil-Electric and Electric Rail Tractors. Nature 137, 267–268 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/137267c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/137267c0