I've seen photos (like the one attached) where an E44 is clearly capable of operation without overhead catenary. Does anyone know for what approximate distance or time period can they do this?

No offense taken, but the question was a serious one. I know from drawings I have that there are batteries in an E44, and, in addition to the photo I attached the first time, here are a couple more where it seems like the locos are in service, and are in locations without catenary. I therefore came to the conclusion the batteries must provide capability for (probably limited) self-motivation. Granted, these could be static displays, but I'm still curious whether they can move at all on the batteries.

Many turntables do not have electrical wires that follow the rotating platform, but do have wires that run the length of the tracks that are attached to them. This means that the pantographs have to be lowered for operation of the turntable. When entering or leaving the turntable, the lok will use the leading panto as the trailing one would snag on the loop in the middle where the wires are all attached.

The batteries are there for power to the cab, lights, pantograph motors, horn, etc and maybe to the brake pressure generators, etc. There is no power to the motors

Regards

Mike C

Edited by user 20 March 2013 21:44:21(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Electric loco's require 12,000 volts AC from the overhead wires in Germany,there is no way you can generate that voltage by means of batteries.
Neither is there a way to move 100 tons of steel by means of some batteries only.
Electric loco's are being pushed on the turning table (Drehscheibe in German) by a smaller diesel loco,i have seen that happening at Bochum-Dalhausen.
If you find electric loco's with the pantographs down they are either static and not moving or being pulled by a locomotive under power,in Holland we call this "opzending" ("in despatch").

Edited by user 15 January 2013 18:29:56(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Hi!
Looks like the museum track at Leipzig. They have so many platforms there, they can use one to display historic rolling stock.
History electric locos are often displayed on tracks that have no catenary.

BTW: nominal catenary voltage is 15,000 volts in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Motors are often operated at lower voltages and those old locos have AC/DC motors similar to those used by Märklin

Here's a picture of a battery powered loco:
http://home.arcor.de/akkuschlepper/42.htm
That small battery-powered orange shunter just hauled the big diesel loco out of the shed. So it doesn't seem impossible to include this in a regular loco (but AFAIK it was never done for E 44 or E 04 or other German locos of that era).

"Drehscheibe" is the German word for turning table.

@Rick
Brilliant idea! ... the locos coasting over bridges and into stations where the new catenary systems start.

@Tom
Great photo of the little orange guy.
My 7 year old girl said "Cutsey, its a baby croc."

Edited by user 18 March 2013 04:58:08(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Yes that indeed is Leipzig. The Museum Loks are all parked on track 24. Track 25 is now an indoor car park. Track 1 and 2 on the other side of the building are being reworked for the new S-Bahn City Tunnel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Tunnel_Leipzig




r/Thomas

Not in Germany/Austria/Switzerland, and the E04/E44 types shown in the photos undoubtedly have traction motors fed directly with AC.

There is no doubt that, until the arrival of modern high-power electronics, the best type of motor for railway traction use was DC. However, DC traction supply is expensive and high-voltage AC supply with voltages transformed down on the loco is considerably cheaper, but on-train rectification, to convert the AC to DC for the motors, was a significant problem.

There is a kind of motor that will work with both AC and DC voltage but in traction use, the effects of "commutation" make this unattractive for railway use at the normal industrial frequency of 50Hz. That is why Germany/Austria/Switzerland railways went for high-voltage AC supply but with the industrial frequency converted to 16 2/3Hz for railway use, and this means that AC voltage is applied direct to the motors (after being transformed down from 15,000 volts). Modern electronics has made this unnecessary but I can't see the countries where 16 2/3 Hz is used for traction changing to 50Hz any time soon.

In Sweden and Norway electrifcation of the railways started pretty much at the same time as in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and the same voltage and frequency were chosen.

To add to Tom's comment. It is correct that DC would have been better.

When electric railways first came about, the electric equipment industry*) had a couple of decades of experience from electric trams. At that time it would have been less complicated to feed also railway lines with DC. However, there is an important difference between a tram network in a city and a railway line and that is the distance between where the electricity is consumed**) and where it is fed into the catenary system or combined catenary and power line system. With DC distribution over large distances, the transmission losses would have been too large. With an AC transmission you can transform the electricity to a higher voltage for transmission and given that the losses are related to the square of the current, the lower current you transmit the better to keep the losses at bay.

So the requirement that the electric industry faced when going into electrification of long railway lines at the beginning of the 20th century was to have an electric current that could be transformed, in other words it needed to be an AC, and at the same time be as similar as possible to DC in its behavior. And the latter was related, as Tom pointed out that the electric motors were similar to DC motors where industry had "long" experience from electric trams. This explains in part the "strange" frequency of 16 2/3 Hz, which isn't so strange if you think about the fact that it is one third of the 50 Hz that was becoming the European standard and to build rotating converters was relatively easy - in principle just a large 50 Hz electric motor directly coupled to a generator for 16 2/3 Hz.

____
*) Companies like ASEA in Sweden, BBC in Switzerland and Siemens in Germany to name a few.
**) Strictly speaking, the electric energy is not consumed but converted into motion energy (and heat) in the tram or electric engine.

In Nice the trains have batteries to pass sections without catenary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_tramway

In other towns they use third rails in the middle of the track. Only small sections under the train are on power.
Used for street cars only in old towns where they do not want to have catenary.
See Bordeaux:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bordeaux_tramway

Class E 80 of Deutsche Reichsbahn already had batteries and pantographs. Many others had batteries but no pantographs.
It was said before: it would be technically possible to equip an E 44 with batteries to have it run short distances without catenary. But AFAIK E 80 is the only German electric loco with that capability (batteries are heavy and will be avoid if they are not used rather often).