Standby batteries? To run trains?

Over in the NY Central yahoogroup, somebody said the Yonkers (?) powerhouse had standby batteries for the third rail.

"...inside Glenwood? It was supposed to be built with a bank of storage batteries so in the event the generating equipment failed they could run the trains off the batteries, at least for a couple hours."

Somebody else said they'd need batteries in the substations at least. Anyone ever heard of anything like this, on the Central or anywhere?

How many ohms per mile in the third rail?

timz wrote:
How many ohms per mile in the third rail?

Not sure what this is really going to help you with, but with 70# rail the resistance is .0038 ohm/1000ft, and with 150# rail the resistance is .0020 ohm/1000ft.

Source, IEEE - www.ewh.ieee.org/r1/new_york/mar03mon.pdf

Batteries hold much too little energy to run trains--you would need an impractically-huge battery bank to do that. I'm sure the idea is a myth.

Battery traction power was used for street cars (Suffolk Traction in Patchogue ran battery power) but the energy one would need to run the Hudson line, passenger and freight would require a LOT of batteries. It is possible there was a bank of batteries at the Powerhouse to do other things, such as magnetize pole peices in generators. Or to provide an exciting current.

This sounds like Engineers Dreams...

Hmmmmm.....

IIRC in Middleton's book "When the Steam Railroads Electrified", he mentioned that as part of the initial NYC installation, there was a huge storage battery. Apparently, it could run the whole system for an hour or so.

I'll dig it out to verify that - my copy is buried somewhere. His stuff is usually pretty accurate.

Likely, the batteries provided power for the control gear so that breakers and all could be operated.

BTW, the NYCTA did experiment with battery backup on the R-110s - they had the ability to crawl at 5mph to the nearest station. There was also a battery operated EMU line out in the UK - the equipment ran on third rail then battery for a few miles and recharged at the terminal. I doubt there'd be enough battery out there to run a whole RR for an hour, though - that's a LOT of electricity...

"When the Steam RRs Electrified" does say the eight (?) substations had standby batteries with a total capacity of 22000 amp-hours, which I guess means at 660 volts, tho it doesn't say that.

We also seem to have a factor-of-ten discrepancy on third-rail resistance. Is that supposed to be 0.0038 ohms per thousand feet, or 0.038?

(Hope he doesn't mind me quoting from yahoogroups...)

"To answer another question, the resistance of the 70 lb third rail
was about 0.164 ohms per mile, not accounting for any additional
resistance in the bonds and depending on the alloy characteristics of
the steel. Most of the traction current was carried in copper wires
tied to the third rail with "jumpers," which you commonly see as dark
ceramic "domes" with wires coming out of them."

timz wrote:"When the Steam RRs Electrified" does say the eight (?) substations had standby batteries with a total capacity of 22000 amp-hours, which I guess means at 660 volts, tho it doesn't say that.

."

Splitting the batteries up at different substations through the system might actually work. I thought all of these batteries were at Glenwood. That wouldn't. Too much loss.

Right, it would make much more sense to have the batteries at a substation than on the train, since these trains already run on third rail. It could even make some sence to have the batteries in one central locations, such as the power plant since a train is only going to take power from a substation for a short period of time, then it'll start to draw power from the next substation. That way if you only expect say 1/4 of the substations to be drawing current at a time, you could get away with much less batteries, and centralized maintence, but then you'd have all the transmission losses as well.

If this powerplant was only producing power for the railroad, and it was the only power plant for the entire line, I'd say putting the batteries in the power plant would probably make the most sense. Since you have control over your demand, you could stop most trains, and just run a few train that would stop at all the stops, thus conserving the batteries for a longer period of time, if you knew it was going to take several hours to bring the power plant back on line. Sure, it would be crowded on the train, but I'd rather take a crowded train home than be stranded at work due to power failure.

The way the system works today, with distrubited power and the railroad buying power from the grid, make this uneffective, plus trains of today use much more power than the early trains.


I've seen some pretty large battery rooms in my day. This data sheet has some good info on these types of batteries.

http://power.tycoelectronics.com/pdf/ro ... teries.pdf

Batteries to run trains? Believe it! I was involved a few years ago with the replacement of electrical controls and machinery on the South Channel Jamaica Bay Subway Bridge over Jamaica Bay; it takes the "A" train to Far Rockaway. On the Rockaway side is Hammel's Wye interlocking and the Hammel's Wye substation. On some of the plans we had, which were taken from originals circa 1950; the entire rear of the substation (the Beach Channel Drive side) was referred to as the "Battery Room".

This section of railroad was not always NYCTA property; it was originally part of the Long Island Railroad. Apparently the wodden trestle burned in the 1940's and the LIRR, having an easterly route into Far Rockaway; decided to abandon it. The NYCTA purchased the line and built the current bridges around 1952. We rebuilt the bridge machinery in 2000.

But when these lines were built; some steam railroads prior to the 1900's, then electrified later; reliable power was just not available. The railroads built their own power plants and transmitted energy on their own lines at 11,000 volts, 25Hz, 3 phase to substations along the way. At the subs, the 11kV was transformed down to 600V DC for the 3rd rail. While that is done with solid-state rectifiers today, it was probably done with motor-generator sets back then.

Apparently, power interruptions were more frequent the further away you were from the main power plants located in and near Manhattan. So in several outlying substations, huge battery plants were provided with individual cells wired in series-parallel combinations to get 600 volts DC with a ampere-hour capacity of thousands and thousands of amps. The batteries were simply in parallel with the track and the local DC source, and if the DC power went down, the batteries were already online and took the load. The intention was never to continue to run trains on normal schedules or speeds; but to at least allow a train or two at a time to reach the next station or two so as not to strand passengers.

The former LIRR 11kV 3 phase transmission lines are at least still partially intact westerly along Beach Channel Drive to the Hammel's Wye substation. Inside the substation is a more recent solid-state substation fed from local utility lines. I believe that some original open buss on insulators still exists.

Not sure when the battery plant came out; probably when power became more plentiful and reliable. This story about early battery backup and pictures of the Hammel's Wye battery room "as it was" are published in one of the historical retrospective books about the early LIRR; which is where I originally read it; someone at the Jamaica Bay Bridge project had a copy. If I can find the title, I will post it.

PRRTechFan wrote:Batteries to run trains? Believe it! . On the Rockaway side is Hammel's Wye interlocking and the Hammel's Wye substation. On some of the plans we had, which were taken from originals circa 1950; the entire rear of the substation (the Beach Channel Drive side) was referred to as the "Battery Room".

At the subs, the 11kV was transformed down to 600V DC for the 3rd rail. While that is done with solid-state rectifiers today, it was probably done with motor-generator sets back then.


.. The intention was never to continue to run trains on normal schedules or speeds; but to at least allow a train or two at a time to reach the next station or two so as not to strand passengers.



Not sure when the battery plant came out; probably when power became more plentiful and reliable. .

This would be roughly the same as today's UPS systems, which float a large load for a short time.

Probably as the power got more reliable the batteries saw less and less of a load and they probably ended their useful life unnoticed.