Ok but that’s infrastructure and we don’t pay for that (for real though we need to upgrade our outdated catenaries)
Comment on Whoever wrote this headline has never encountered a passenger train before in their lives
neidu2@feddit.nl 1 week ago
Now, imagine this revolutionary improvement: Find a way of putting the energy source outside of the train somehow, and save on weight by not hauling those heavy batteries around.
Christ, the amount of times techbros and tesla fanboys have accidentally “invented” trains and trams these past few years is beyond stupid…
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 1 week ago
cmfhsu@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Well a battery electric train is probably useful for those routes with a section that isn’t powered.
Not sure if it would be awfully cleaner than a diesel electric train, because those are already pretty efficient as I understand it.
kungen@feddit.nu 1 week ago
If you’re already laying tracks, why not lay electricity as well?
cmfhsu@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Because there already are tracks without electricity where I live. When coming from a nearby major city, the train has to stop for 40 minutes while they switch from an electric to diesel power car
teolan@lemmy.world 1 week ago
But even in that case it’s 10x better to have more frequent, cheaper diesel trains than having insanely expensive and heavy battery trains.
kungen@feddit.nu 1 week ago
I’m not a rail expert, but I thought for some reason that rails without electricity would be too old/unmaintained to be allowed to serve passenger traffic, lol.
40 minutes? I would have imagined that everyone would hop off at the station, they’d then drive out to a parking junction, and then drive back the electric train to the station for people to load in again. Isn’t it also very expensive to take the train (you’re from the US I assume)? Not weird that no one wants to take it when it’s in such bad situations :/