The most comprehensive history of North American railroad electrification, William D. Middleton's When the Steam Railroads Electrified has been out of print for many years. Now, Indiana University Press is proud to announce the return of this much sought after volume in a new, updated second edition, with a new final chapter, appendixes, bibliography, index, and nearly 800 illustrations.
For most of the first half of the twentieth century the United States led the world in railroad electrification. Before the outbreak of World War II, it had some 2400 route-miles and more than 6300 track-miles operating under electric power, far more than any other country and more than 20 percent of the world total.
In almost every instance, electrification was a huge success. Running times were reduced. Tonnage capacities were increased. Fuel and maintenance costs were lowered, and the service lives of electric locomotives promised to be twice as long as those of steam locomotives. In many cases, the savings resulting from electric operation were sufficient to repay the cost of electrification in as little as five years.
Yet despite its many triumphs, electrification of U.S. railroads failed to achieve the wide application that once was so confidently predicted. By the 1970s, it was the Soviet Union, with almost 22,000 electrified route-miles, that led the way, and the U.S. had declined to 17th place behind such countries as Czechoslovakia, Austria, Norway, and Brazil. For a while, the prospects for electric operation for U.S. railroads brightened during the energy crisis of the 1970s, and as power companies began to consider the major market represented by railroads, and then faded away again.
Today, electric operation of U.S. railroads is back in the limelight. The federally funded Northeast Corridor Improvement Program has provided an expanded Northeast Corridor electrification, with high-speed trains that are giving the fastest rail passenger service ever seen in North America, while still other high-speed corridors are planned for other parts of the country. And with U.S. rail freight tonnage at its highest levels in history, the ability of electric locomotives to expand capacity promises to bring renewed consideration of freight railroad electrification.
Middleton begins his ambitious chronicle of the ups and downs of railway electrification with the history of its early days, and brings it right up to the present – which is surely not the end of this complex and mercurial story.