The Only Game In Town

This is the story of the development of remote-controlled railroad distributed motive power. Distributing locomotive power throughout the length of a long, heavy train and controlling those dispersed locomotives remotely, shares the motive force throughout the train rather than concentrating it all conventionally at the head-end. The technology provides a railroad with the tools to multiply the carrying capacity of trains without adding expensive trackage. With synchronous traction and braking control, the system provides the locomotive engineer with opportunities to handle trains more safely and effectively, especially in mountainous territory. Many railroads have found that it is the only solution to increasing network capacity other than to install duplicate or triplicate trackage.


It is important that the history of technological development be accurately recorded and perhaps more so in the case of a niche application such as this; a technology that has so assuredly contributed to the safe operation of long, heavy freight trains. LOCOTROL was the progenitor of the technology, and Moffat's account-being the only known detailed history of these developments-is a remarkable contribution to such literature.


This book is for both rail professionals and historians interested to understand the origins and technical development of LOCOTROL, as the author incorporates a valuable personal connection to these developments. These include a graphic part-diarised account of a four-month installation project in India and a highly personalised portrayal of the man most responsible for the introduction of LOCOTROL to the Canadian Pacific Railway - the first large-scale global customer for the technology. The CPR experience with LOCOTROL is vital as it paved the way for global acceptance of the product.


This book is not an instruction manual on how to operate LOCOTROL. It does, though, include descriptive narrative and graphic substance around how LOCOTROL operates; the better to describe and explain it. The LOCOTROL product continues to evolve, and-not intending to pursue this incremental development as far as the current day-this history is limited to the iteration known as LOCOTROL III. Since taking over Harris Controls, GE Transportation have greatly advanced the technology, integrating it with the electronic control of locomotives and train air braking.


Prior to the advent of ECP braking, distributed power had arguably been the single greatest technological advance for railroading since the introduction of the automatic coupler and the air brake triple valve. Originally known by various names before receiving the proprietary name LOCOTROL, this was the first distributed power scheme to be proven in regular service and for 40 years was the only practical application of this technology.