RUSSIAN CANAL USES ELECTRIC TUGS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 26 June 1940, Page 2

RUSSIAN CANAL USES ELECTRIC TUGS

INVENTION OF WOMAN ENGINEER COSTS HALVED [By Air Mail—Special Correspondent] LONDON, Bth June. Transport on the New Ladoga Canal in Russia will be operated entirely by electricity, as a result of an invention by a Soviet woman engineer. Experiments have shown that a tug can be driven by electric power fed by wires stretched along the banks of the canal. A woman engineer employed at the Central Institute of Research in River Transport has designed a special contact waggon which feeds power by cable to the tugs. This waggon slides along on wires as the tug moves. The fitting of tugs with electric motors instead of steam or oil engines reduces the initial cost of the vessels and the cost of repairs. Also| the cost of electric traction is only about half that of steam power. The regulation of the speed and the manoeuvring of the tugs is said to be facilitated by the use of electric motors. For years the Soviet has been trying to improve their canal system in order to reorganise their transport. If this new method of propulsion is successful, tugs and other vessels will become “water tramcars.”