Originally posted by: EyeMWing
Originally posted by: dpopiz
awesome! dannyboy must now tell us everything he knows about trains!
hey, my friend told me that locomotives actually use electric motors to propel themselves -- that the diesel engine just charges up batteries and generates electricity to drive the motors. --because even a huge diesel engine can't provide enough torque to get a whole train started from a halt.
true?
I know GE has a big beast that does just that. It's a hybrid, similar to the car's implementation, with generator drives off the engine and regenerative braking (mwahaha) Was just introduced recently, though. Not sure how it was done previously.
I suspect DannyBoy doesn't know too much about diesel, it doesn't really fly in Europe. Virtually their entire system is electric.