# Solar panels



## greatcats (May 11, 2015)

On Train 4 crossing Missouri. Just passed a BNSF worksite which appeared to be replacing ballast. On the ends of each gondola car of the work train were mounted solar panels. Does anyone know the purpose of these?


----------



## tomfuller (May 11, 2015)

Most likely there is a 12 volt battery to run a blinking light all night on each end of the cars. The solar panel keeps the batteries charged.


----------



## amtkstn (May 11, 2015)

These panels control the doors on the bottom of the cars that dump ballast. They work a lot better then the older manual power doors and are a lot cleaner. The old ones a train crew member had to walk along side it and hold the doors open as the ballast dumped.


----------



## greatcats (May 11, 2015)

Thank you for the replies! Hat a great source of information this forum is!


----------



## Ryan (May 11, 2015)

Experimental solar powered train.


----------



## fillyjonk (May 11, 2015)

Ryan said:


> Experimental solar powered train.


Heh. I'm guessing it wouldn't do any LD overnight trips....


----------



## CelticWhisper (May 11, 2015)

fillyjonk said:


> Ryan said:
> 
> 
> > Experimental solar powered train.
> ...


That's what the bicycle pedals in Coach are for. Keep to the sleepers if you're smart.


----------



## Peter KG6LSE (May 12, 2015)

Ive all was wondered why ( money aside ) there are not a nice layer of PV ( the cells not the varnish) on the tops of pax cars.. I figured out the lights and most of the 120V Pax outlets could run nice on some PV on the roof .

a superliner could gather at 23% eff 17.5 KW . ........ thats some power ! .

thats 3000 Plus Iphones you can charge at once .....OR IF the train is full you get 180 watts per person.

PV is heavy but its not a 787 dreamliner.

food for thought....

I wanna see HEP go DC with inverters at every car and use proper switch mode systems to provide power at the needed voltages .this would interface well with a grid tie inverter for the PV and the DC batts .

the EE in me is drooling over the idea of this


----------



## caravanman (May 12, 2015)

Given the problem Amtrak has keeping the windows clean, I can just imagine their problems with muck on the solar panels !

Ed


----------



## neroden (May 12, 2015)

There's been a trend to powering streetlights with small solar/battery combos. Also railroad signals. I expect we're going to see more and more miniature off-grid deployments like this.


----------

