Flintlock76"Ow, that Hertz!"
Well, I thought it was funny; it brought a smile.
But then again, I was meditating. Ohm.......................
Semper VaporoGerman scientists proposed the term "Hertz" to represent 'Cycles Per Second' in the 1920's to honor German physicist Heinrich Hertz. It was adopted by the International Electrotechnical Commission in October 1933.
And in any case it wasn't commonly adopted here, at least in radio, for a lot longer than that: in fact the use with reference to the punsibility of a 'potential' of 17,000 watts ERP to represent how much 103.3 might mega'hertz' was still novel in the '70s. Kilocycles and megacycles and in power work 60 cycles per second were all I ever heard growing up.
New Haven on the other hand was famous for a much more famous Hertz, one that came to represent far more pain to PRR than alternating-current frequency ever could. But that's another New Haven superiority story for another thread...
(Incidentally I have always given more credit to Westinghouse than to the NYNH&H in the actual technical development of the 11kV 25cps approach to railway traction. That may not be fully justified, but I do think PRR had more in-house participation from its own engineers, notably including Gibbs, than New Haven did.)
Now when I was very little there was nothing more magical and 'big-time railroading' than New Haven triangular catenary! That had to be the essence of high speed and power ... right? It was very hard to learn that it was not, and then again to learn that el-cheapo-looking stuff strung with a bunch of weights dangling from pulleys was vastly better still. Ah! to have one's childhood safe again!
Flintlock76 PATTBAA The vast PRR electrification was confirmation that the NHRR established an electrification system that would be successful on any railroad for all types of rail traffic , and any volume of rail traffic Overheard at PRR headquarters: "Confound it, the New Haven knows more about electrification than we do!" "Ow, that Hertz!" Sorry, couldn't resist.
PATTBAA The vast PRR electrification was confirmation that the NHRR established an electrification system that would be successful on any railroad for all types of rail traffic , and any volume of rail traffic
Overheard at PRR headquarters:
"Confound it, the New Haven knows more about electrification than we do!"
"Ow, that Hertz!"
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Sorry, can't resist either! While "very punny", your story cannot be true.
German scientists proposed the term "Hertz" to represent 'Cycles Per Second' in the 1920's to honor German physicist Heinrich Hertz. It was adopted by the International Electrotechnical Commission in October 1933.
So the brass at PRR would not have uttered your pun.
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
PATTBAAThe vast PRR electrification was confirmation that the NHRR established an electrification system that would be successful on any railroad for all types of rail traffic , and any volume of rail traffic
timzSomeone said that 16-2/3 Hz would have been a better choice, except that NH already had some 25 Hz equipment in their shops (or something like that) and that overruled the theoretical advantage of 16-2/3.
I do not now remember, but Tim and others probably do, but some of the argument for 25Hz distribution was applicability to other industrial (and, in those days, domestic!) electrification fed from the distribution power (up to 132kV in the case of some PRR Gibbs & Hill work).
Remember that a lot of the motor design in the early era was weird by even the standards of a couple of decades later -- this was still very much in the age three-phase two-overhead setups were still 'competitive' for railroad work. And while the mercury-pool rectifier existed in that era (Droege publishing in 1916 speculated on its size reduction to mount in moving equipment!) I think there was more emphasis on 'universal' motors on the one hand and humongous motor-generator setups on the other than on things concerned with rectifying higher-frequency AC.
At this long remove from the bad old days of odd D experimentation it takes some care, and perhaps a little imagination and frissons of schadenfreude, to recreate some of the 'excitement' caused by the early NH experiments with low truck-mounted motors.
Someone said that 16-2/3 Hz would have been a better choice, except that NH already had some 25 Hz equipment in their shops (or something like that) and that overruled the theoretical advantage of 16-2/3.
Edit: I remembered wrong -- it was 15 Hz that they said was better. Maybe Google scanned that issue of Railroad Gazette -- it's on page 177 of the issue for 16 August 1907. Says NH already had "a number of power houses... for trolley operation and, in addition, had equipped many of its shops with 25-cycle motors."
To be precise, the New Haven was the first heavy duty AC electrification. Several interurban lines were equipped with 25 Hz AC in the 1904-08 timeframe. Had GE's first installation for a 1200VDC interurban been done in 1904 instead of 1907, the AC interurbans would probably not been built. Do note that a large percentage of the interurbans were using 25Hz to supply their substations.
Getting back to the New Haven... While the PRR's installation varied significantly from the NH's installation, there were a lot of lessons learned from the NH installation.
Yeah, but remember that PRR adopted their own version of 11kV 25Hz for suburban electrification not too far removed from the NH version and used completely different design in most respects. To my knowledge New Haven never had anything like Liz, and the whole of what proved an abortive set of mistaken analogy, from the execrable L5s (AC or DC) through the 'Atlantic', 'Pacific', and 'Mikado' replacements (and the R1) before adopting the New Haven articulated chassis in the GG1.
(Afterward development again diverged wildly; as far as I know New Haven did not try the larger 428A in twin motor, and had some interesting but not fireproof excitement eith the Jets, and only came to modern freight electrics secondhand, while PRR ... the less said about anything not an E44 derivative, perhaps the better.
I for one would have liked to see earlier explicit high-speed cat in places on the New Haven, but all those wrecks in the Mellen years more or less killed much desire either for passenger speed or electrification to fulfill the promise of those expensive loop tracks on the east end...
Welcome to the casbah!
The New Haven became the progenitor of the "single=phase" system when it electrified it's surburban line in 1907 with 25 cycle , 11,000 volts traction power. The 6-track Harlem River freight line was electrified in 1912 , and the system was extended to New Haven in 1914. Eventualy the Harlem River Branch became the most direct route for an enormous volume of freight and passenger traffic between New England and points West and South of Philidelphia via the PRR.When the PRR electrified with the New Haven system , the PRR engineers, in their quest for a "standard" electric locomotive , avoided "re-inventing the wheel" and decided to build a locomotive that basically was a duplicate of a locomotive already operating; the New Haven's EP-3. The vast PRR electrification was confirmation that the NHRR established an electrification system that would be successful on any railroad for all types of rail traffic , and any volume of rail traffic. Re: "When the steam railroads electrified" , William D Middleton , "New Haven Power", J Swanberg.
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