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General railway discussions

Urban Sky said:
Which brings us back to the question of who can name any FRA/TC-compliant DMU type which is currently available for production…
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Stadler FLIRT. Currently in service with TexRail (Ft Worth, TX) and on order for DART (Dallas, TX), Arrow (Redlands, CA) and OC Transpo (Ottawa, ON).
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FRA compliant (no waiver required) under Alternative Compliance, in effect since 2019 (basically EU regs plus a thicker windshield). Stadler is the first company selling European DMUs in North America because they were the ones who helped get Alterative Compliance approved in the first place, using the CalTrain Stadler KISS EMUs as a sort of pilot implementation. Given how easy it now is to get an European DMU certified in the US, I'm sure Siemens and Alstom would also figure out some cost-effective options if an RFP were issued.

TC does not have an equivalent certification category, so OC Transpo's Stadler FLIRTs run under a waiver. But I wouldn't be surprised if they're working on one, since they're generally pretty consistent with the FRA.
 
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Amtrak's new order of hybrid diesel trainsets got me thinking about different ways diesel trains could use batteries to actually capture the energy from their regenerative brakes rather than just burning it off through resistor packs on the roof.

How about a diesel commuter rail locomotive which uses a battery pack instead of a head-end power generator? I could envision 3 operating modes:
Battery more than half full: only recharge from regenerative braking
Battery less than half full: above plus also from prime mover while under low power settings
Battery getting low: recharge from prime mover regardless of power setting.

It is remarkable to think about the amount of kinetic energy that GO trains just burn off as heat each time they stop at a station. An empty 10-car GO train weighs 630 000 kg (130t + 10x50t), so at 100 km/h it has 247 megajoules of kinetic energy. Even at the train's maximum HEP output of 500kW, that would translate to 8.3 minutes of head-end power, which is more than the time between stations for many local GO services. Of course there are conversion and storage losses so it would probably only be half as much in reality, but the point is that there is a fairly significant amount of energy which could potentially be captured. And diesel engines tend to be less efficient at lower loads, so increasing the load while under low power settings probably doesn't cost that much fuel.

Of course overhead wire electrification is a better solution for most local GO services, but perhaps it would be useful for the non-electrified Milton line or some lines in other systems.
 
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roger1818 said:
It is amazing that the hydrogen tanks will fit in the same space as the cooling system for the diesel engine.
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Also interesting that the volume of the battery is small enough to fit under the frame. I presume it’s placed there to keep the center of gravity lowest. I wonder what (if any) provision is made to swap out and access individual battery cells.

I wonder also how many horsepower-hours of output can be carried in that volume of hydrogen storage.

- Paul
 
Towered said:
I would hope we can do better than that. In the spirit of prioritizing the health of the environment and decreasing reliance on cars, the Ontario government should invest in the infrastructure.
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So because private money is being used to build a rail line in Alberta, public money should be used to do the same in Ontario? I am not saying that we can't or shouldn't ever build a Toronto-Collingwood/Blue Mountain rail link, but if the objective is "prioritizing the health of the environment and decreasing reliance on cars", there are much lower hanging fruit that should be the priority for taxpayer investment. If a private company can make some money doing it, great. If not, lets focus on projects that will give the biggest bang for the buck.
 
crs1026 said:
Also interesting that the volume of the battery is small enough to fit under the frame.
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I'm not really surprised. The battery is just for load balancing and regenerative breaking (onboard software can be programmed to optimize when to charge it in preparation for an increase in tractive power requirements and when to discharge it for regenerative breaking capacity based on the route plan and GPS data).

crs1026 said:
presume it’s placed there to keep the center of gravity lowest.
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Exactly. Also, unlike diesel, which is heavier than air, you want to keep the hydrogen as high as possible, so that if there is a leak, it will dissipate up and away more quickly. And before anyone says anything about the Hindenburg, compressed or liquified hydrogen is much safer than hydrogen at atmospheric pressure, as there is less oxygen nearby for it to react with.

crs1026 said:
I wonder what (if any) provision is made to swap out and access individual battery cells.
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I would presume they can drop out the pack, and then open it up to swap out modules or cells if needed. I haven't seen the actual design to know for sure though.

crs1026 said:
I wonder also how many horsepower-hours of output can be carried in that volume of hydrogen storage.
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Not sure about the "horsepower-hours" of the hydrogen storage, but the use of regenerative breaking will decrease the number hp-h of electricity converted from hydrogen required to haul a train compared to the number of hp-h of electricity converted from diesel in a traditional locomotive. Also, ignoring upstream losses, a hydrogen fuel cell is almost twice as efficient as a diesel generator, so they will only need to store slightly more than half as many BTUs of H2 compared to diesel to produce the same amount of electricity. How they choose to store the H2 (i.e. compressed or liquid form) will also affect the size of the tanks,

Also of interest, according to this article, the locomotive has a "total rated power of more than 1,715 kW (2,300 horsepower)." That will be a limitation of the fuel cell/battery combination as well as the traction motors, not the hydrogen tank though.
 
roger1818 said:
So because private money is being used to build a rail line in Alberta, public money should be used to do the same in Ontario? I am not saying that we can't or shouldn't ever build a Toronto-Collingwood/Blue Mountain rail link, but if the objective is "prioritizing the health of the environment and decreasing reliance on cars", there are much lower hanging fruit that should be the priority for taxpayer investment. If a private company can make some money doing it, great. If not, lets focus on projects that will give the biggest bang for the buck.
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Nothing about my quote stated that it should be a top funding priority, so I'm confused as to how you inferred that.
 
Bordercollie said:
Is there a plan to have the service extended to Lake Louise?
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Not that I'm aware of. A search for "Banff Calgary train service" gets us the plan we're discussing, but "Lake Louise Banff" or "Lake Louise Calgary" doesn't. That being said, I would hope that they design this thing to be extendable to Lake Louise. There is almost certainly a business case for doing so.
 
DirectionNorth said:
Not that I'm aware of. A search for "Banff Calgary train service" gets us the plan we're discussing, but "Lake Louise Banff" or "Lake Louise Calgary" doesn't. That being said, I would hope that they design this thing to be extendable to Lake Louise. There is almost certainly a business case for doing so.
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With the picture of the station at Banff, there is no technical reason it could not be expanded. 34 miles of twinning/trippling track, some bridges. The track is close to a river and on a slope, but nothing insurmountable. Given in the last two decades the highway was twinned, the environmental issues shouldn't be insurmountable either.

Likely would require a much larger capital subsidy though compared to the airport-Calgary downtown-Banff project though. Perhaps even an operational one. Lake Louise's number of hotel rooms and population is tiny in comparison to Banff's.
 
crs1026 said:
^It’s interesting how the financing is said to have been put together, with an eye to managing both the risk to private investors as well as the risk to the taxpayer.

The environmental and Indigenous consultations will prove a challenge. I wonder what the economic upside to First Nations might need to be to obtain their support, and how much environmental mitigation might cost (one has to expect this will require more than the average attention, and may lead to a new higher standard), and has this been built into the numbers yet.

It does seem to lead towards a win-win-win scenario: gives Ottawa a way to put federal money in up front thus showing support for Alberta’s economic development, protecting the provincial risk while leveraging the economic potential of Alberta tourism, while finding the least environmentally intrusive way of getting the greatest number of tourist dollars into the Banff area.

Makes one think there are more legs to this than one might have believed earlier.

Of course, one wonders how this can move this far this fast (including CIB taking a public stand) when HFR has moved so slowly…. but maybe this is the political equaliser that HFR needs to win over voters in some other parts of the nation.


- Paul
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The private proponents have been working since 2016 or so. So faster? I don't know. It also helps that the private proponent can clear barriers by throwing money at problems, instead of the government needing to follow careful and risk averse procedures. It is a weird project, because while the billionaires behind the project are potentially investors, they are also doing it as a quasi philanthropic legacy thing.

Hopefully a stop on the reserve, to super charge their local tourism economy and casino will be enough as the project will entirely be within the CPR corridor. Maybe the Nations' substaintial investment fund will even come in as investors.

The mitigation through the parks, I doubt it will be an issue. CPR leaking grain is a much larger environmental issue as it attracts animals onto the tracks and then they get hit.
 
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