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Prussian 1914 Electric Demonstrator Trains (1/4)
Happy New Year everyone!
Long overdue, I finally managed to finalize my Prussian electric demonstrator units over Christmas.
Originally planned for 2014 to celebrate their 100th birthday, my electric slugs finally took more than two years to build in LEGO. I kept modifying them over and over again - the hood, the running gear, and especially wheel and driveshaft houses. I think I have reached a point now where they're mature enough for sharing.
Shown above is a model of the Prussian electric slug EB1 close-coupled to its control car. Both are unpowered, but the slug's headlights are equipped with PF LEDs.
Here's some background story on the prototypes and the concept in general:
Back in 1914, the Prussian state railroad administration strived to replace steam traction on the commuter trains of Germany's rapidly growing capital city, Berlin. One requirement was to re-use the existing stock of standard 3-axle coaches, which lead to a traction concept of electric slugs semi-permantely coupled to control cars (modified coaches with one compartment replaced by a control stand and equipped with pantographs for 15kV AC feeding).
A typical so-called "half-train" (Halbzug in German) would consist of such a slug and its control car, followed by four coaches, and a second control car at the remote end for bi-directional operation. Two of those half-trains could be merged to form a full-train (Vollzug), with a third slug at the trains's center as optional helper.
In order to provide a full train for testing, three demonstrator units were ordered in 1914: EB1 through EB3, with EB3 delivered one year after his two cousins and designed as a semi-autonomous helper unit carrying its own pantograph. To speed up delivery, the running gears of the slugs were taken one-to-one from EG511-class (later DR E71) locomotives in production at that time.
Testing started in 1914, but the turmoils of World War One, rapid technical progress, and superior competing designs lead to the concept being abandoned by 1920. All three demonstrator units were scrapped, with their running gears re-used as spare parts for E71's.
Finally, here's a couple of pictures showing the demonstrator units and the train arrangement. I had to dive deep into offline sources during my research for this project and got a lot of mission critical insights from a fellow German scale modeler and train expert, so if you have any questions regarding this short but rather unique chapter of electric traction history in Germany feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer them.
Prussian 1914 Electric Demonstrator Trains (1/4)
Happy New Year everyone!
Long overdue, I finally managed to finalize my Prussian electric demonstrator units over Christmas.
Originally planned for 2014 to celebrate their 100th birthday, my electric slugs finally took more than two years to build in LEGO. I kept modifying them over and over again - the hood, the running gear, and especially wheel and driveshaft houses. I think I have reached a point now where they're mature enough for sharing.
Shown above is a model of the Prussian electric slug EB1 close-coupled to its control car. Both are unpowered, but the slug's headlights are equipped with PF LEDs.
Here's some background story on the prototypes and the concept in general:
Back in 1914, the Prussian state railroad administration strived to replace steam traction on the commuter trains of Germany's rapidly growing capital city, Berlin. One requirement was to re-use the existing stock of standard 3-axle coaches, which lead to a traction concept of electric slugs semi-permantely coupled to control cars (modified coaches with one compartment replaced by a control stand and equipped with pantographs for 15kV AC feeding).
A typical so-called "half-train" (Halbzug in German) would consist of such a slug and its control car, followed by four coaches, and a second control car at the remote end for bi-directional operation. Two of those half-trains could be merged to form a full-train (Vollzug), with a third slug at the trains's center as optional helper.
In order to provide a full train for testing, three demonstrator units were ordered in 1914: EB1 through EB3, with EB3 delivered one year after his two cousins and designed as a semi-autonomous helper unit carrying its own pantograph. To speed up delivery, the running gears of the slugs were taken one-to-one from EG511-class (later DR E71) locomotives in production at that time.
Testing started in 1914, but the turmoils of World War One, rapid technical progress, and superior competing designs lead to the concept being abandoned by 1920. All three demonstrator units were scrapped, with their running gears re-used as spare parts for E71's.
Finally, here's a couple of pictures showing the demonstrator units and the train arrangement. I had to dive deep into offline sources during my research for this project and got a lot of mission critical insights from a fellow German scale modeler and train expert, so if you have any questions regarding this short but rather unique chapter of electric traction history in Germany feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer them.