Thread: Electric Freight Trains

Originally Posted by AndyG

I see we have Electric Freight trains around Emerald from memory for coal.

Would the inland freight route, and ADL-MEL-SYD-BNE sustain such an upgrade with appropriate track work.

Increased capital cost to set up.
But
Cheaper locomotives
More efficient energy conversion to traction
Reduced Carbon foot print,
Get the price right, and a reasonable track speed, say 100 km per hour, a lot fewer trucks doing the intercapital dash
So a lot more trains.

Seems like a reasonable win win , which is never discussed.

The yanks move enormous freight trains at 130 kmh (80 mph). BNSF and Union Pacific run 130 wagon coal and grain trains that keep pace with cars on a parallel Interstate highway. Their container trains are now mostly double decked and have what they call "possum belly" wagons that take two x two double decked 40' containers. The syndicate would have to speak nicely to the Qld. Government and cross their palms with silver to build a couple of big coal fired power stations.

A couple of points.

1. The Inland Rail, Melbourne - Brisbane is currently under construction. Do you electrify this or the one via Sydney? (The reason for the inland rail is that the Sydney area lines are about saturated, and real estate is too expensive to even think about adding more tracks.)
2. The distances involved between major cities on any of these routes almost certainly make electrification marginal at best.
3. Upgrading the tracks on any of these routes is going to be very expensive - too many mountains and not enough freight. And straightening the tracks to allow the high speeds Brian is suggesting would add a lot more cost, not only for earthworks and bridges, but also for land acquisition.
4. I am not sure it is relevant, but the Blue Mountains line was originally electrified to Lithgow mainly to allow the use of electric traction over the mountains. Essentially no freight is currently carried over this line, in part because the wiring is not up to the increase in the size of freight trains. Changing the electrification to high voltage AC is probably the solution to this, but the changeover would be very, very, expensive. And again, building an alternative route for a freight railway anywhere in the Sydney basin, or for that matter in the Melbourne area, would be extremely expensive just for land acquisition.

I like this electric train. Much cheaper than putting expensive copper wires up for 900+km The Company Alstom already makes most of the trains here anyway
Suspect we could put Hydrogen electric trains in all currently electric lined trains/ trams for less than the amount we could sell the copper we could then take down Copper is about us$5,613.75 per tonne.

https://www.railway-technology.com/features/ilint-worlds-first-hydrogen-powered-train/

train-ed.jpg

EI read today that it cost 5 million pounds. It was an article on the BBC site about an older train set converted to hydrogen fuel cell.
regards PhilipA
the other issue of course is that h is made from natural gas.
nobody has worked out yet how to produce it “greenly”

Originally Posted by Bigbjorn

The yanks move enormous freight trains at 130 kmh (80 mph). BNSF and Union Pacific run 130 wagon coal and grain trains that keep pace with cars on a parallel Interstate highway. Their container trains are now mostly double decked and have what they call "possum belly" wagons that take two x two double decked 40' containers. The syndicate would have to speak nicely to the Qld. Government and cross their palms with silver to build a couple of big coal fired power stations.

There are only a few hundred miles of electrified rail tracks in the US.(excluding suburban passenger networks).

Originally Posted by PhilipA

EI read today that it cost 5 million pounds. It was an article on the BBC site about an older train set converted to hydrogen fuel cell.
regards PhilipA
the other issue of course is that h is made from natural gas.
nobody has worked out yet how to produce it “greenly”

Angus Taylor seems to think he has.

Agree it would definitely be smarter and cheaper to electrify the new inland freight route than try to upgrade the existing coastal route.
Those coal trains around Rockhampton and other areas up north are impressively long.

And burning all that coal to produce the electricity to run them; so electrification is better how?

The NSW elecric locos were phased out as the coal trains started to be hauled without changing locos and the remaining collieries with electric haulage were the western line ones around Lithgow. As an aside the Western Mail used to be electric hauled to Lithgow and the diesel locos were attached to haul the train to Dubbo and Parkes. The shunting always woke me up as an apprentice going home from TAFE.

Pacific National currently haul double stacked containers from Parkes west and the inland line will be designed to accomodate this. US railways are not really comparable with Australia as the loading gauge is so much larger allowing double stacking and wider loads (no platforms in the US)

Australian railways also suffer from infrastructure designed and built in the 1800s such as tunnels and alignments that preclude modernisation at a reasonable cost. One of the advantages of the inland railway is that it will be able to improve efficiency at a more reasonable cost than upgrading other routes.

Regards,
Tote