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The DC motor was the mainstay of electric traction drives on electric and diesel-electric locomotives, street-cars/trams and diesel electric drilling rigs for many years. It consists of two parts, a rotating armature and fixed field windings surrounding the rotating armature mounted around a shaft. The fixed field windings consist of tightly wound coils of wire fitted inside the motor case. The armature is another set of coils wound round a central shaft and is connected to the field windings through "brushes" which are spring-loaded contacts pressing against an extension of the armature called the commutator. The commutator collects all the terminations of the armature coils and distributes them in a circular pattern to allow the correct sequence of current flow. When the armature and the field windings are connected in series, the whole motor is referred to as "series-wound". A series-wound DC motor has a low resistance field and armature circuit. For this reason, when voltage is applied to it, the current is high due to Ohm's law. The advantage of high current is that the magnetic fields inside the motor are strong, producing high torque (turning force), so it is ideal for starting a train. The disadvantage is that the current flowing into the motor has to be limited, otherwise the supply could be overloaded or the motor and its cabling could be damaged. At best, the torque would exceed the adhesion and the driving wheels would slip. Traditionally, resistors were used to limit the initial current.

As the DC motor starts to turn, interaction of the magnetic fields inside causes it to generate a voltage internally. This counter-electromotive force (CEMF) opposes the applied voltage and the current that flows is governed by the difference between the two. As the motor speeds up, the internally generated voltage rises, the resultant EMF falls, less current passes through the motor and the torque drops. The motor naturally stops accelerating when the drag of the train matches the torque produced by the motors. To continue accelerating the train, series resistors are switched out step by step, each step increasing the effective voltage and thus the current and torque for a little bit longer until the motor catches up. This can be heard and felt in older DC trains as a series of clunks under the floor, each accompanied by a jerk of acceleration as the torque suddenly increases in response to the new surge of current. When no resistors are left in the circuit, full line voltage is being applied directly to the motor. The train's speed remains constant at the point where the torque of the motor, governed by the effective voltage, equals the drag - sometimes referred to as balancing speed. If the train starts to climb an incline, the speed decreases because drag is greater than torque and the reduction in speed causes the CEMF to fall and thus the effective voltage to rise - until the current through the motor produces enough torque to match the new drag. The use of series resistance was wasteful because a lot of energy was lost as heat. To reduce these losses, electric locomotives and trains (before the advent of power electronics) were normally equipped for series-parallel control as well.

Locomotives that operated from AC power sources (using universal motors as traction motors) could also take advantage of tap changers on their transformers to vary the voltage applied to the traction motors without the losses inherent in resistors. The Pennsylvania Railroad class GG1 was an example of such a locomotive.

If the train starts to descend a grade, the speed increases because the (reduced) drag is less than the torque. With increased speed, the internally generated back-EMF voltage rises, reducing the torque until the torque again balances the drag. Because the field current is reduced by the back-EMF in a series wound motor, there is no speed at which the back-EMF will exceed the supply voltage, and therefore a single series wound DC traction motor alone cannot provide dynamic or regenerative braking.

There are, however various schemes applied to provide a retarding force using the traction motors. The energy generated may be returned to the supply (regenerative braking), or dissipated by on board resistors (dynamic braking). Such a system can bring the load to a low speed, requiring relatively little friction braking to bring the load to a full stop.

On an electric train, the train driver or motorman originally had to control the cutting out of resistance manually, but by 1914, automatic acceleration was being used. This was achieved by an accelerating relay (often called a "notching relay") in the motor circuit which monitored the fall of current as each step of resistance was cut out. All the driver had to do was select low, medium or full speed (called "series", "parallel" and "shunt" from the way the motors were connected in the resistance circuit) and the automatic equipment would do the rest.