CN just purchased Wabtecs Flexdrive battery locomotive and is testing it on long haul trains. The technology for long haul battery operated trains is here.
Wasn't the NS'S 999 a battery locomotive, sponsered by an University, recharged from Norfollk Southern's coal fired steam plant at the Juniata shop ? So this might be the sneaky reintroduction of the steam locomotive.
The actual paper is open access:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-021-00915-5.pdf
This article has been making the rounds in my tech circles and more general interest spaces.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/11/can-we-run-our-trains-using-big-batteries/
The comments sections are as you might expect folks that know, folks that don't and folks with good intentions.
I think it's an interesting technology experiment for a university, but I found it quite interesting that the article itself and much of the commentary on it miss a few key things.
First and formost, the equivalency that they've chosen seems ilconceived. I'm not a Railroader, but I know enough to know that one of the things that caused diesel to dominate over steam was that it could actually run further than a steam engine could. Creating a battery system that has the ability to haul a train about the same distance as a typical steam engine doesn't have relevance to the modern railroad. That distance also isn't defined as on level ground or over mountains. That makes a big difference.
In addition, the notion of dragging multiple boxcars worth of battery behind the engines seems extremely undesirable if not unnecessary. Though, for purposes of an experiment it's fine.
The other aspect that is disappointing is it doesn't offer any context vs the current battery electric engines that are on offer. This is a newsworthy item as far as it goes, but EMD and Wabtec both of engines on offer already. The Wabtex FLX in particular would be worth comparing to this yet it doesn't.
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