Recently there has come a demand, from the laity of the railroad world at least, that there be a revival of progress in this extension of electrical power upon our standard railroads. McAdoo sensed this well before he left his high office and said that at least one-fifth of the railroad mileage should be operated electrically at the earliest possible opportunity. And more recently there has come a larger realization to the land of its wholesale waste in potential water-power, as well as a gradual closing and increasing expense of its coal-supply.
The big builders and designers of our steam locomotives have not been asleep to this movement. They have met it in very recent years by a real improvement in the quality of that machine. For many years the steam locomotive grew in quantity--in mere size and bulk, if you please--rather than in quality. Once again we were captivated by the use of the word "big." When we read not many years ago of the coming of the first 200-ton locomotive we drew in our breath a little. Four hundred thousand pounds! And without its great load of coal and water at that. What a monster! Here, indeed, was Frankenstein. But what old Frank could do in smashing down bridges and rail levels we wotted not of. Yet what was the 200-ton locomotive compared with the 300-ton and the 400-ton monsters that the Santa Fé and the Delaware and Hudson began installing about a dozen years ago? It seemed as if no limit could be reached.
Yet the fact that a size limit could be reached and apparently was reached, was still no sign that the limits of steam locomotive efficiency had even been approached. Because the methods by which these limits may be extended, apparently almost indefinitely, are so complex and withal so fascinating, I am taking them up in a separate chapter of this book. This chapter and the one that follows it are the record of the achievements and the possibilities of the electric locomotive, whether as a separate unit or merely as a compact bundle of energy stowed away in the trucks of a passenger or freight-car. That locomotive shall receive our first consideration.
Now despite all the improvements that we shall see have been made upon him, the American steam locomotive of to-day seemingly remains a laggard. In the days when his fuel was both plentiful and comparatively cheap one might merely say that he was extravagant and let it go at that. But now when coal if not scarcer is far more expensive his extravagance has become totally unwarranted.