The electrification of the LSWR refers to the installation of electric traction on the London and South Western Railway surface network, and its successor the Western Section of the Southern Railway, in England. The LSWR started a programme of electrification in response to rising costs and loss of traffic to street tramways; the first installation was to Kingston, Richmond, Hounslow, Hampton Court and Shepperton, starting in 1917. The third rail DC system was used, as it was assessed to be considerably cheaper to install and maintain than the overhead systems then in use. The rolling stock was constructed by the conversion of relatively new coaches built for suburban steam-hauled operation. The LSWR generated its own electric power at a new power station near Wimbledon. A frequent regular-interval timetable was implemented and the system was a considerable success.
The government forced the grouping of the railways in 1923, under the Railways Act 1921 and the LSWR was part of the larger Southern Railway, together with the South Eastern and Chatham Railway and the London Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR). The LBSCR had adopted an overhead contact system at 6.6kV25Hz for its suburban network. The Southern Railway considered the two systems and decided to adopt the LSWR third rail system, and in due course the LBSCR system was converted, and the third rail system was installed over a large proportion of the suburban area of the Southern Railway, as well as some main line installations. The Portsmouth Direct line was electrified in 1937.
The Southern Railway was nationalised in 1948 and further extensions of the system were installed by British Railways. An overhead contact system was adopted as standard for new routes that were not an extension of existing third rail networks. The third rail system is now (2022) operational over 14% of the total rail network in Great Britain, equating to 36% of the electrified network.
Prior systems First installations
The first public electric railway in the world was opened in 1881 in Berlin. An electric tramway service for the use of the public began running from the Anhalt station in Berlin to the suburb of Lichterfelde Ost, as an experimental demonstration system. It ran on dedicated metre-gauge track with an overhead contact wire at 180V, over a length of . It was installed by Siemens & Halske.Howard W A Linecar, British Electric Trains, Ian Allan Ltd, London, 1947, page 12Ralf Roman Rossberg, Deutsche Eisenbahnfahrzeuge, von 1838 bis heute, Springer Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg GmbH, 1988, ISBN 978 3 642 95771 0, page 149
In August 1883 Magnus Volk inaugurated the first of his electric railways at Brighton, using a 50VDC third rail system, and in September 1883, an electric line was brought into service in Portrush, Ireland, in connection with the Giant's Causeway. It used a third-rail contact system at 290VDC. In 1899 the contact system was altered to an overhead contact wire. Voltage drop proved to be an issue.Linecar, page 14
Overhead line systems In 1908 the Lancaster to Morecambe and Heysham line was electrified at 6.6kV25 Hz by the Midland Railway as an experiment to demonstrate the practical use of such a system.Modernisation of North-West Lancashire Electrification, in Railway Magazine, December 1953, page 795J C Gillham, The Age of the Electric Train, Ian Allan Limited, Shepperton, 1988, ISBN 0 71101392 6, page 67
In 1903 the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway was concerned about the high cost of operating its inner suburban South London line and the company decided to set about an electrification scheme of the route. Encouraged by the published intentions of the Midland Railway project, the LBSCR decided to adopt a similar overhead contact system at 6.6kV. Portal gantries were generally used to support the overhead line system, and in the more congested environment of inner South London, it was discovered that standard dimensions were usually inappropriate, so that the majority of the portals were designed individually. This slowed the installation considerably, and added to its cost.Linecar, page 92David Brown, Southern Electric, volume 1, Development of the London Suburban Network and Its Trains, Capital Transport Publishing, Crowthorne, 2009, ISBN 978-1854143303, page 11
Sub-surface lines Many sub-surface urban railways in London, the North-West of England and overseas were powered by electricity; in 1890 the City and South London Railway had been opened,Desmond F Croome and Alan a Jackson, Rails Through the Clay, Capital Transport Publishing, Harrow Weald, second edition 1993, ISBN 185414 151 1, page 15 followed in 1898 by the Waterloo and City Railway,Croome and Jackson, page 31Linecar, pages 29 and 30 and in 1900 by the Central London RailwayCroome and Jackson, page 35 and in 1904 by the Great Northern and City Railway.Croome and Jackson, page 71 Then in 1906 and 1907 the Baker Street and Waterloo Railway,Croome and Jackson, page 79 the Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead RailwayCroome and Jackson, page 80 and the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway opened. All of these railways operated successfully with thirdrail or third-and-fourth rail electric traction. The partly sub-surface (but not tube) Metropolitan Railway had electrified the underground sections of its network in 1905,Alan A Jackson, London's Metropolitan Railway, David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1986, ISBN 0 7153 8839 8, page177 and part of the Metropolitan District Railway was so treated in 1903.Electric railways, 1880 - 1890, Institution of Engineering and Technology, London, 2008, ISBN 978 0 85296 805 5, page 67 Indeed, the District Railway had been running electric trains over LSWR tracks since 1905, to Richmond from Turnham Green and to Wimbledon from Putney Bridge.G T Moody, Southern Electric: A History of the World's Greatest Suburban Electric System, Ian Allan Limited, London, 1958, pages 13 to 16Gillham, pages 22 to 24
LSWR electrification The need for action
In the early years of the twentieth century, the LSWR had a dense steam operated suburban network, but its trains were considered to be slow and infrequent. Street-running tramways were abstracting business from the LSWR: they were frequent and they directly served residential districts that many railway stations failed to approach. The tramcars journeys were not necessarily slower than a stopping train. In addition there was concern that the rival Central London Railway was planning an extension into the LSWR area.Alan A Jackson, The Railway in Surrey, Atlantic Transport Publishing, Penryn, 1999, ISBN 090 68999 0 7, pages 78 and 82 It was clear that the LSWR needed to take steps to staunch the loss of business. Herbert Ashcombe Walker was appointed to the post of General Manager of the LSWR from 1 January 1912. He was a dynamic manager and quickly saw that the need was to make the suburban passenger service more attractive, and to make operating and maintenance economies, and electrification was the means of achieving that. He appointed Herbert Jones to the post of Electrical Engineer. Jones had been involved with the pioneer electric tube line, the City and South London Railway.Brown, volume 1, pages 24 to 26
Selection of a system Jones went on a fact-finding trip to the United States later in 1912, to look particularly at DC third-rail installations in use on urban railroads there. He was impressed with what he saw, particularly with regard to the economy of installation and reliability in use of such systems. This resulted in the third-rail DC system being chosen as most suitable for the task by both Jones and Walker. It had the advantage of simple and cheap installation of the contact rail. Transmission required the use of rectifiers and rotary converters, of which the technology was still primitive, but train operation by direct current was now in widespread proven use on railways. A suitable scheme was drawn up very quickly, and was presented to the LSWR Board in December 1912. Adoption of the LBSCR system was considered, but it had significant disadvantages: in particular it was obvious that it had cost much more than the LBSCR had budgeted for, and the catenary systems and structures to carry the overhead contact required a lengthy construction time.
First electrification scheme Scope The proposals of Walker and Jones to electrify the principal suburban lines of the LSWR were adopted by the Board early in 1913. The scheme was to be divided into two stages: stage one was to be Waterloo to Waterloo via both the Kingston and Hounslow loops, the main line out as far as Hampton Court Junction and thence onwards to both Hampton Court and Claygate (a short distance down the Guildford New line, probably intended to provide a turnback location off the main line), the Shepperton branch, and Wimbledon to East Putney and Point Pleasant Junction. This part of the scheme covered 50route miles (80route km) and about 150track miles (240route km), and it was expected that the work involved would take two years to complete, at an estimated cost of £1.16 million. Stage two was to include all three routes to Guildford, via Epsom, Cobham and Woking, and possibly Twickenham and Hounslow to Windsor.
Power supply
The LSWR built its own power station at Durnsford Road near Wimbledon. Work started immediately in 1913, but was suspended due to the First World War. The power station had 16 Babcock & Wilcox boilers and five 5,000kW Dick Kerr turbo-alternators, which generated power at 11kV, three-phase, 25Hz. Provision was made for a 10,000kW extension. Three 400kW turbo-generator sets supplied direct current at 220V for the switchboard control circuits, for driving the auxiliaries and also for lighting the power house.Linecar, page 94Brown, volume 1, pages 26 to 28
From Durnsford Road, power was distributed to nine sub-stations at Waterloo, Clapham Junction, Raynes Park, Kingston, Twickenham, Barnes, Isleworth, Sunbury and Hampton Court Junction. Sub-station equipment included transformers to step down from 11kV to the line voltage of 600V, and rotary converters to change to direct current. The rotary converters had to be staffed continuously, a significant expense.
The conductor rail was flat-bottom Vignoles section, of high conductivity steel, 100 lbs per yard (50 kg per metre), laid above, and outside the running rail, these dimensions being respectively between top of conductor rail and track rail and between centre line of conductor rail and running edge of running rail. Return was by the running rails, bonded with flat copper wire protected by special fishplates. The motors picked up their supply by overrunning shoes placed midway along a beam suspended from the motor bogie axleboxes.
First LSWR routes commissioned
The first line treated was from Waterloo to Wimbledon via East Putney. The line from Putney Bridge to Wimbledon had been jointly built by the LSWR and the Metropolitan District Railway in 1889, and had been electrified by the District in 1905. There was a spur from Point Pleasant Junction on the LSWR Barnes line connecting to East Putney, on the Wimbledon line. The District Railway used 600VDC, so for compatibility the LSWR adopted that voltage. The District trains used a third and fourth rail, whereas the LSWR trains used a third rail only. To enable interoperability the fourth rail was electrically bonded to the running rails. The LSWR electric operation started on 25 October 1915 on weekdays only. There was a twenty-minute frequency, but patronage was very poor, and the service was soon considerably reduced.Alan A Jackson, London's Local Railways, David & Charles, Newton Abbot, 1978, ISBN 0 7153 7479 6, pages 354 to 365