Hacker News Reader

Comment by fold_left | Hacker News Reader

> In 2016, Germany unveiled the Coradia iLint, the world’s first hydrogen-powered train, which can run for 600 miles on a single tank of fuel – on par with the distances that traditional trains achieve on a tank of diesel

> The train’s hydrogen power system produces sufficient power to take the train 50 to 75 miles. The train, called Hydroflex, is the UK’s first to be powered by hydrogen

The iLint seems to be much further advanced. In this Industry, what does a Team in the Hydroflex's position normally do next in this position?

View on HN

Long distance tracks are mostly already electrified in most places. In Germany & the Netherlands, diesel trains are limited to the edges of the rail network and there have been plenty of experiments with replacing those with hydrogen, gas and even battery trains. Mostly those trains service short routes.

> Long distance tracks are mostly already electrified in most places.

That's certainly not true in the US.

That's not so true in the UK, here is a map of electrification from 2010 [0]. The only major difference is the Great Western Mainline (from London to Wales) is now electrified as far as Cardiff. A lot of passenger trains are still powered by diesel, and for freight trains I believe diesel is used in even higher proportions.

[0] https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/410/media/images/46102000/gif/...

Here in Ontario, Canada, all regional rail is diesel.

What keeps all the tracks from be electrified? If it's just cost, what would make it cheaper to use fuel cells?

Electrifying rarely used tracks makes little economic sense. There is a huge up-front cost and you have significantly increased maintenance costs. Hydrogen powered trains can be rolled out incrementally.

Makes perfect sense, thanks.

Electrication in more rural areas means over head lines. That's so you can use high voltage and not suffer power loss over long distances. Those are hard and expensive to setup and much more likely to break during extreme weather. So they're not really suitable for places with weather or low numbers of trains (as all rail costs are ultimately per passenger).

It has to be said that adding overhead cabling above train-tracks is far from trivial.

Back in 1996, or so, I was on a work-placement with British Rail and our project was auditing the bridges and tunnels along various routes. In order to fit overhead cables over the tracks, and over the trains, there were are lot of bridges that had to be raised, adjusted, or replaced to give clearance room.

It is expensive, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st-century_modernisation_of_...

That doesn't answer my question.

Oh well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com