user 29398
Train Attendant
- Joined
- May 6, 2021
- Messages
- 65
There are plenty of reasons to convert the remainder of the system from 25 to 60 Hz. Interoperability with equipment designed for the 60-Hz systems that exist everywhere in the country except a portion of the NEC, simplified specs for future orders of locomotives / trainsets, ability to use power from the grid without frequency converters, etc.I assume by "NJT is all 60 Hz" you mean lines that are exclusively NJT such as the former Lackawanna out of Hoboken.
There is really no reason to convert from 25 Hz to 60 Hz and such a change would require a massive replacement of fairly modern solid state frequency converter substations plus the Susquehanna River dam generators that provide 25 Hz directly. Consider that in Europe Germany and Switzerland (and Austria?) still use 16.7 Hz and have no plans to convert from the lower frequency.
Maybe those reasons justify the cost, maybe they don't, but there definitely are reasons.
Anyone know why the PRR decided to go with the lower frequency in the first place? Surely even by the 1930s 60-Hz power was becoming standard. Lower reactive losses? The pantograph skipping off the wire at frequencies near 60 Hz?
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