The Pennsylvania Railroad's class L5 were the railroad's second generation of production

electric locomotive An electric locomotive is a locomotive powered by electricity from overhead lines, a third rail or on-board energy storage such as a battery or a supercapacitor. Locomotives with on-board fuelled prime movers, such as diesel engines or g ...

s after the DD1, and the last to use a

jackshaft A jackshaft, also called a ''countershaft'', is a common mechanical design component used to transfer or synchronize rotational force in a machine. A jackshaft is often just a short stub with supporting bearings on the ends and two pulleys, gear ...

and

side rod A coupling rod or side rod connects the driving wheels of a locomotive. Steam locomotives in particular usually have them, but some diesel and electric locomotives, especially older ones and shunters, also have them. The coupling rods transfer t ...

s to drive the wheels. The L5 was a single-unit locomotive instead of the

twin-unit A twin unit or twinset is a set of two railroad cars or locomotives which are permanently coupled and treated as if they were a single unit. A twinset of cars or coaches can also be called a twin car. In US passenger railroad parlance, twin u ...

DD1. The

wheel arrangement In rail transport, a wheel arrangement or wheel configuration is a system of classifying the way in which wheels are distributed under a locomotive. Several notations exist to describe the wheel assemblies of a locomotive by type, position, and c ...

Whyte notation Whyte notation is a classification method for steam locomotives, and some internal combustion locomotives and electric locomotives, by wheel arrangement. It was devised by Frederick Methvan Whyte, and came into use in the early twentieth cen ...

was

2-4-4-2 In Whyte notation, 2-4-4-2 refers to a railroad steam locomotive that has two leading wheels followed by four coupled driving wheels, a second set of four coupled driving wheels, and two trailing wheels. Equivalent classifications Other equival ...

, or 1-B-B-1 in the AAR scheme. Twenty five were built in 4 distinct subclasses. The lead unit of the class was equipped for AC operation with an overhead

pantograph A pantograph (, from their original use for copying writing) is a mechanical linkage connected in a manner based on parallelograms so that the movement of one pen, in tracing an image, produces identical movements in a second pen. If a line dr ...

(later two), while the other 24 were

third rail A third rail, also known as a live rail, electric rail or conductor rail, is a method of providing electric power to a railway locomotive or train, through a semi-continuous rigid conductor placed alongside or between the rails of a railway ...

DC units to work on the existing PRR third rail electrification in the New York area. The class was built with an eye towards future long distance electrification with the idea of a single class that could be used interchangeably between the present and future AC electrified zones and the DC electrified zone in New York City. The PRR also used the L5 order to try out electrical equipment manufacturers other than Westinghouse, which had provided the propulsion equipment for both the DD1 and FF1 classes. The original classes were to be simply L5 for the AC units and L5a for the DC units, but as the additional equipment suppliers were brought on the scheme changed to include the intended function (passenger), the current used and finally the electrical supplier. Westinghouse supplied the majority of the units with 1 L5Paw class and 12 L5pdw class.

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable en ...

and

Brown Boveri Brown, Boveri & Cie. (Brown, Boveri & Company; BBC) was a Swiss group of electrical engineering companies. It was founded in Zürich, in 1891 by Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown and Walter Boveri who worked at the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon. In 1970 ...

each supplied 6 classed L5pdg and L5pdb respectively. The L5 was not as successful as the DD1 as the side rod electric locomotive concept proved to be unsuited to the demands of long distance electrification. Even in the existing short haul service the L5's long rigid wheelbase and poor weight distribution caused it to be withdrawn significantly before the older DD1s.

Footnotes

References

* * 2-4-4-2 locomotives L5 11 kV AC locomotives 600 V DC locomotives Electric locomotives of the United States Scrapped locomotives Standard gauge locomotives of the United States {{electric-loco-stub