Comment on Swiss hydrogen-powered train sets 1741-mile record for nonstop travel
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 7 months agoOverhead lines are almost as expensive as laying the track in the first place though.
Comment on Swiss hydrogen-powered train sets 1741-mile record for nonstop travel
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 7 months agoOverhead lines are almost as expensive as laying the track in the first place though.
RubberElectrons@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Not if you do it simultaneously… cost is higher than just rail, but rains wouldn’t have range limits at all, and would weigh less, meaning less energy used to accelerate (and better emergency brake response).
I’m very pro EV, but even more a fan of distributed power systems that aren’t chemical based.
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 7 months ago
That ship has, for the most part, sailed though.
RubberElectrons@lemmy.world 7 months ago
We can consider it a relatively straightforward upgrade to the system though. Definitely more expensive than upgrading individual trainsets to h2 or lithium, and nowhere near as quick… But it could be staged, or just the mainlines.
Imagine mainlines get electrified so EV or h2 trains use none of their onboard energy, until they start getting onto the unelectrified branches.
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 7 months ago
That’s exactly what New Zealand is doing with battery electric trains, the plan is for them to run on batteries once they get beyond the overhead line network, to service areas where it’s not worthwhile to have overhead lines.
Not with hydrogen trains though, that’s a dead end technology.