Trains accelerate incredibly slowly and often have a single gear that is optimised for high speed. Similar to trying to pull away in your car in too high of a gear this makes trains really slow and takes along time for them to hit their high speed.
Most cars will often have 4 (for very old cars) – 6 gears to keep acceleration smooth and fast whilst still being efficient at high speed but trains don’t.
I get that electric motors have all of the torque available at low RPMs whilst ICE only have full power at a high rpm but wouldn’t gears still allow trains to get to higher speeds quicker?
In: Engineering
Modern locomotives are electric. The diesel engine provides power to the the main generator which then goes through a rectifier and then gets sent to the traction motors (wheels) the engineer controller the speed through the use of notches or speeds 1-8. Even in 8th notch the engine is hardly over 900 rpm. 903 rpm iirc
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