During summer I'll have the chance to work at the nostalgia department of the Austrian Federal Railways. Their oldest electric locos date from around 1900. I guess it'll be a lot of fun working on those old machines. The mechanic part was much more important back then. One of our teachers said 60 years ago a railway motorcar was 60% mechanic work and 40% electrical engineering. Nowadays it's 30% mechanic and 70% electronics.
Just for info... the Austrian 15kV 16 2/3 Hz grid still completely runs off their own power plants as well as _huge_ (think MVA range) rotating inverters from 50 Hz!
