Quote:
Originally Posted by instarx
True, power is "transmitted" from engine to drive wheels in a locomotive, but that doesn't make a locomotive a transmission. LOL
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But that is not what I wrote. Apparently I wan't clear enough, so I'll try again. Forget about locomotives for a second, and just think of the general process. You have an engine producing power, and wheels on the ground. If the engine can't drive the wheels directly (as with e.g. wheel-hub motors), you need some sort of device to get the power from the engine to the wheels, right?
That device is a transmission. It can be mechanical, with gears and a clutch. It can be hydraulic, as with an automatic transmission. Or it could be electric, with the engine turning a generator, and the current running motors at the wheels. You could, with a decent engineering shop, swap the mechanical transmission of your current car for an automatic, no? (Or vice versa, depending on what you have to start with.) That swap wouldn't turn your car into a hybrid, would it?
You could swap whichever transmission you have for a motor-generator, and have an electric transmission. Your car would still run, but would it be a hybrid? Not by any reasonable definition, so why would a locomotive be one?