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Faster than a speeding bullet!
More powerful than a diesel Iocomotive!
Able to tunnel through tall buiings!
With little more fanfare than the hiss of releasing brakes, two AEM7 electric locomotives accelerated out of Boston's South Station with Amtrak Acela Regional train 131 on January 31, 2000. It was the first regularly scheduled train to run under electric power over the entire Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington. While the passengers on board might not have been aware of train 17 I's distinction, they certainly glimpsed its significance when the train pulled into New Haven, Conn., two hours into the trip ... and the coach lights stayed on. Gone was the 15-minute engine change from diesel to electric. Replacing it was a brief two-minute station stop. Amtrak's first morning train out of Boston had covered its first 156 miles 22 minutes faster than it had the day before, and passengers who rode the train's entire 457-mile trip arrived in Washington a full hour and five minutes earlier.
This is the power of an electrified main-line railroad. Trains can run faster and heavier, using less energy, and at lower operating and maintenance costs. It's what the New Haven knew in 1907 when it embarked on a pioneering venture: the first significant single-phase A.C. electrification in North America. It's what the Pennsylvania Railroad understood in the 1920s and '30s when it strung overhead wire from New York to Washington and Harrisburg, part of the greatest such project ever undertaken in North America. And it's what drove Amtrak in 1996 to finish what the other two railroads had started, with a New Haven-Boston installation that's the very last word in modern electrification technology.
Today, Amtrak's Acela Express runs wind sprints on the Northeast Corridor at speeds up to 150 mph, on a BostonWashington run that's 50 minutes faster than even train 171's historic trip. This is Amtrak's Super Railroad-the fastest and busiest in the land-and it's been a century in the making.
The New Havens Bold Venture
Nothing like it had been done before. Yet in 1905 the New York, New Haven & Hartford staked what was ultimately a $15 million capital investment on an unproven system of high-voltage, singlephase A.C. electrification. Its success made the New...