Chapter 2
Electric Engines

Among all the aspects of railway, there is one, in which FS has obtained important results since they were established: the electric traction. In the first half of the Twentieth Century, Italian Railways collected a large number of records: the first factory exclusively devoted to building electric engines (Westinghouse, Vado Ligure, 1908); the revolutionary electrification of Alps and Appennini lines with the threephase system, in the 1910's, that showed for the first time the supremacy of electricity against steam; the world record for mass-construction of electric engines (448 units of E.626) and for extension of electrified lines (4700 km) in the 1930's; the first engine capable of 120 km/h without leading axes (E.636, 1940); the fast services made by the Elettrotreni EMUs - or, more precisely, the invention itself of the Elettrotreno - with ETR.200 units running from Milan to Naples (1938).

And after such a heroic period, even the more ordinary production of the traditional technology has been noticeable, with more than one thousand engines that shared the "Italian wheel arrangement", with three bogies under an articulated body (B₀'B₀'B₀'), for many decades the most important part of FS traction stock. And we cannot forget the new generation of luxury trains which took the Nation along the recovery after the war, as well as the high speed challenge in the Sixties, with vehicles that were in the forefront in Europe, from ALe 601 to E.444 Tartaruga, and finishing with the Pendolino and the invention of the tilting technology, a peculiar innovation that created followers in many other countries.

Thanks to the extremely long life of electric engines (another environment-friendly aspect of railway, often underestimated) many of the most famous electric locos and railcars have been working up to recent years, or are still running today: some of them will be presented in the next pages.