Hydrogen train troubles

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The Alstom Coradia hydrogen set that was testing on the regional route in Quebec was sent back and they are now all diesel again. There was a lot of coverage (and hype) when it arrived and the test commenced, but little more than a footnote about the conclusion.
 
It is great that DB has the equipment availability to quickly remove the Hydrogen trains and revert to diesel. As well as Quebec trains. But that is not the way it works here in the USA. Especially here in the USA. We seem to ditch any old equipment before any problems are found and tasken care of. Look at the Acela-1 removal from service leaving Amtrak short of capacity.

What is a worry is that there are many rather small outfits that are basing all there capacity on a single type of equipment. If that equipment has a recall then there will be no back up, Now there is Caltrain going all in with Statler EMUs. Not likely a major failure but what if there is? No back up with passenger cars going to Peru and diesels being trashed.,

Then there is Amtrak. Suspect that it will rapidly trash AX-1s once enough AX-2s come into service. If that happens will we hear "Woe is Me" if a problem with AX-2s? Then we have ALCs. new coaches, Viros all which one or more may have teething problems. Just hope Amtrak holds on AMs long enough to fill in in case of a problem and also P-42s.

The only case that seemed to go smoothly were the F-40s. Of course the prime movers and electronics were broken in on the SDP-40s they replaced.
 
MARC Rider said:
The article doesn't explain what sort of problems the "hydrogen trains" had. It's not clear whether they are electric trains powered by a hydrogen fuel cell or trains powered by an internal combustion engine fueled by hydrogen.
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Hydrogen fuel cell + batteries. the only hydrogen combustion multiple unit sets I know of are the proposed rs-zero which Stadler did because they view fuel cell as not dense enough for that platform.
west point said:
It is great that DB has the equipment availability to quickly remove the Hydrogen trains and revert to diesel. As well as Quebec trains. But that is not the way it works here in the USA. Especially here in the USA. We seem to ditch any old equipment before any problems are found and tasken care of. Look at the Acela-1 removal from service leaving Amtrak short of capacity.
Click to expand...
We tend to retire equipment quickly after we get new stock because the existing stock is so old we were barley holding it together with custom manufactured or used parts. Acela Express sets are getting pulled because Amtrak can't get the parts and so its canalize some to keep the rest going. Even a fairly basic coach can only last so long.
west point said:
What is a worry is that there are many rather small outfits that are basing all there capacity on a single type of equipment. If that equipment has a recall then there will be no back up, Now there is Caltrain going all in with Statler EMUs. Not likely a major failure but what if there is? No back up with passenger cars going to Peru and diesels being trashed.,
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Caltrain has 9 locos and 41 coaches being kept, they could make a limited diesel fleet if needed.

We shouldn't have a bunch of small independent passenger operators but its also about how we do procurement. Instead of a partial batch every 5-10 years its once every 25-30.
 

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