Hydrogen train troubles

[west point]

Diesel trains replacing Alstom Hydrogen trains on the Taunus network.

https://www.railwaygazette.com/trac...germanys-taunus-network-in-2025/67902.article

 

[MARC Rider]

Diesel trains replacing Alstom Hydrogen trains on the Taunus network.

https://www.railwaygazette.com/trac...germanys-taunus-network-in-2025/67902.article

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.

 

[jiml]

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.

 

[west point]

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.

 

[GDRRiley]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.,

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.

 

[George Harris]

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.

"Success has a thousand fathers. Failure is an orphan."
Years ago I was part of the small group of young engineers looking for better ways for non-ballasated track in tunnels and on structures. Long before internet, this meant searching by other methods. We were fortunately near the US Department of Transportation Library. A good bit of time was spent there researching past methods used. There were multiple variations of fasteners used between rails and concrete in the 1900 to 1930 time frame. Research in transit work related systems fairly well completely stopped with the start of the Depression, and by that time, early 1970's had barely started back. We ran across several good sounding concepts in available technical literature that were installed in various test sections on various transit and railroad systems throughout the country. For several of these there would be glowing reports about their performance for a couple to a few years, then thundering silence. We realized fairly soon that there had to have been some failure that was regarded as terminal, but had no idea what. Was it the concept or a detail that could be overcome? Fortunately, we had one old guy in our group that did very little work (he tended to enjoy a liquid lunch) but was able to answer some of these questions. More than once, when his brain was unpickled, his memories would save us days of research. One in particular trackform that I remember sounded good, but then silence. He told us this about it, they had a derailment on it so the Chief Engineer told them to rip it out completely. By the way, that was the right answer, as it did have some deficiencies in concept.