Welcome to the new power sources and hybrids page on the 4rail.net! A lot  of development has happened on the subject in the last few years. While energy sources account for 45-60% of operating costs on any railway, it should be one of the subject to get most attention from any sensible operator.   
   
 The Beginnings - Bringing the Fuel Costs Down
In the Nort America, where the railway operations have for long been business driven, the crunching of the fuel costs have always been a major issue. In the early days, each steam locomotive generation and numerous inventions to make them more efficient provided more pulling power per used ton of coal, wood or oil. In the early 20th century after the combustion engine was found reliable, the American railways started shifting quickly from steam power to the diesel power. Diesel power was superior in efficiency both using less oil and needing less maintenance. The second world war stopped the rapid dieselization started in the late 1930s, but within incredible 1,5 decades after the war almost everything was dieselized! 

While the diesels were the main line there were test and production units of electrical engines, mighty turbines and natural gas powered diesel engines. None of these proved to match the advantages of the diesels. The electrical engines those days were found to be too weak (unlike their contemporary cousins). Turbines were ok, but they ran at the same speed when idling as when on the road, proving to be inefficient and were incredibly noisy as well. Natural gas experiments were ahead of their time for the early experiments in 1970s and 1980s.  

"View point: During the steam era numerous experiments on using the fuel more efficiently were made. Electricity and Dieselization of the motive power brought savings in operations. Electricity, although more more efficient, demanded heavy investments in infrastructure. Diesels proved to be more flexible, and where the real competition existed and the ownership of the infrastructure was private, were the choise for railway operators. Here the roads for Europe and North America diverge. Where the European railway network builders were gradually extending electricity to be the number 1 choise, in North America the direction was mainly to dieselization."  

So everything continued pretty much on the terms of the diesels. In Europe, Japan and elsewhere the electric solutions continued their development providing better solutions decade after decade. Currently, the electrical systems can easily provide solutions to power most rail vehicles in most parts of the world, except where the wast distances or low volumes can't justify the building of an expensive network. 

The diesels meanwhile evolved with every generation consuming less fuel per horse power than the previous generation. The economics has improved with steps of 10-15% for each decade. Even with the very low starting figure, the improvements are incredible! The economics of the most modern diesels are today even so great that the most powerfull builder, the General Electric, has plans for the diesel market in Europe where the electric locomotives have ruled for several decades. With the opening markets and uncompetitive priced electricity running a diesel might provide a competitive edge after all.

You've probably run a hybrid powered city bus, or maybe own a hybrid powered car like Toyota Prius or Honda Insight. Early 21st century saw the new becoming of the battery powered solutions, in ever greater scale. You could either crunch additional fuel efficiency by dividing the engine of the locomotive to two or three parts, each running only when needed, like on the Genset below, or you could build a hybrid to a locomotive or even a train scale.   

"View point: The locomotives have so far not been able to charge the braking power to their batteries, but have instead used the the extra energy from diesel engines(s) idling for charging. But this is going to change in 2010 with the introduction of an improved EVO-series locomotive from the General Electric. This locomotive is going to cut fuel consumption with hybrid technology by further 10-15%. Even so, the road is just beginning with numerous improvements in sight within next 10-20 years. This may even mean the current engine technology becoming obsolete and the introduction of fuel cell or other applications in demanding every day use."  

Pictures: BNSF Gensets on the Oakland side of the Bay Area in California in the summer 2008. The lower picture shows well the three 700 Hp truck engines mounted on the rebuilt Geep. Click the picture to see more details!   

General Electric has a hybrid version of its flag ship modern road diesel ES44AC/ES44DC estimated available for tests in 2010. The scale of the hybrid devices used will be huge compared with any bus or similar platform. We will follow closely the developments. The target of this first generation hybrid is to crunch a further 10% off the fuel consuption. This should be a great incentive for any railroad to make the investment, cutting directly the operating costs with additional 5-6%! It will be interesting to see how the GE has solved the space and weight challenge. While the hybrid systems are todays technology, it might be very difficult to provide room for those on the 73' and 415000 lbs monster without the adding weight or lenght! One solution might be cut 1/3 off the engine Hp and loose weight from other other parts of the engine as well and use that space visely for the state of art electrical and battery/capacitor/... systems. We will soon see!      

 New Solution Builders     
General Electric
Rail Power Technologies Corporation
NRE - National Railway Equipment

More to be added soon.

 New Solution Users  
BNSF Railway
Union Pacific Railroad

More to be added soon.