Comment on Whoever wrote this headline has never encountered a passenger train before in their lives
kungen@feddit.nu 3 months agoIf you’re already laying tracks, why not lay electricity as well?
Comment on Whoever wrote this headline has never encountered a passenger train before in their lives
kungen@feddit.nu 3 months agoIf you’re already laying tracks, why not lay electricity as well?
cmfhsu@lemmy.world 3 months 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 3 months 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.
friendlymessage@feddit.org 3 months ago
Not if your goal is to reach net zero emissions at some point
teolan@lemmy.world 3 months ago
That’s not going to happen within the lifetime of the batteries of the trains though.
autriyo@feddit.org 3 months ago
Well, they’d only need enough batteries to cover the distance without overhead lines. So for shortish sections it’s probably fine, just charge while on the powered section.
kungen@feddit.nu 3 months 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 :/
friendlymessage@feddit.org 3 months ago
There are definitely use cases for battery-electric trains: