Western Railroad Discussion > Hybrid power excitement

As posted below I was in California this week where we showed off our new Railpower hybrid switch engine (aka the Green Goat although this one is in UP yellow) at Bakersfield and Fresno. The locomotive has been assigned to Fresno under lease for the next five years. We have 10 more on the way to Texas where five will be assigned to Dallas-Fort Worth and five in Houston.
Although we still consider the unit to be in the development stage, it is the first to be assigned to "regular" duty.
I had the chance to spend a lot of time with the people from Railpower, the Goat's builder, based in Vancouver, B.C., and their enthusiasm is catching. They have scores of more Goats on order and being built for the U.S. and Canada. I have to admit I was skeptical about about the prototype Goat we tested in Roseville and in Proviso in 2002 and 2003. My friend Mike Iden in mechanical, however, championed the unit, reminding me it was experimental more than once.
What is really exciting about this is that the unit should dramatically cut air emissions by 80 to 90 percent and reduce fuel use by 50 to 80 percent.
"Sure," you scoff, "it's just for light switching." True, but...
Thursday night I sat in on a late dinner in Fresno with the Railpower people and Mike where we talked about ideas for additional uses of the technology. The conversation ranged all the way up into high horsepower road use. We were shooting the bull but the conversation got serious here and there about what the designers think is possible and what the railroads want. One of the Railpower guys was furiously scribbling notes.
I can't go into any of the tantilizing details but I felt I was witnessing something very important. One thing for sure, I was glad the waitress took forever to bring the check or we might never have had such an interesting meal.
BTW, as others have mentioned, the Goat sure is quiet. The only noise you hear is the air compressor and the cab air conditioner. When it hums down the track, it reminds of the street cars in San Francisco. Fun.
John Bromley

Are any of these units going to be "radio controlled" units?

Thanks for the report on the Green Goat--good to see UP among the first to try this exciting new technology. The new 2004 General Electric Annual Report has a short story and a locomotive diagram about their work on hybrid locomotives; it will be interesting to see how the two major manufacturers proceed with hybrid development.

John -

How will the hybrid(s) affect UP's diesel fuel bill, and what are the implications if larger motive power becomes available?

Thanks,

-Jim (where diesel is $2.40-2.50/gallon in Colorado)

lynnpowell Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Are any of these units going to be "radio
> controlled" units?
Yes.

I think that this is excellent technology for switching where you are accelerating and decelerating with cuts of cars. I assume that the Green Goat recovers energy during braking and puts it back into the batteries. The hybrid concept may also be worth while for branch line power where the speeds are relatively low and therefore the average power required is low. This is relatively new technology (although, I believe that there were some switchers back in the 30's that would run off straight electric, diesel (or maybe it was gasoline) or batteries). Anyway, I would expect that there will be a number of improvements in a relatively short period of time. I believe that the Green Goat uses standard lead acid batteries. The current hybrid cars use lithium ion batteries but the technology will probably change to ultra-capacitors as they have higher current capacities both in and out and have a much longer life. As these become available for use in transit buses, they should be useable for locomotives.

However, I can not see how it would be useful for high speed main line power or for heavy pulling where you have a high long-term demand for power. I believe that the only practical solution for main line power other than the current diesel electrics is straight electric pulling the power off of a catenary line.

I do not know if UP currently has anyone working on or looking at the economics of straight electric but when I moved to Utah in the summer of 1982, there was a short stretch of catenary line strung for testing between Salt Lake and Ogden. This was probably in response to the last time that oil prices were rising rapidly. I wish I had some pictures of it but, alas, I never tried to photograph it and it was removed sometime in the mid 80's

about 5 years ago i sent a similar design for a hybrid locomotive to curt swenson @ EMD plus several officals @ 2 class 1 railroads. they all said it would never work. thank god i kept the rejection letters.

FallinFlag Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> about 5 years ago i sent a similar design for a
> hybrid locomotive to curt swenson @ EMD plus
> several officals @ 2 class 1 railroads. they all
> said it would never work. thank god i kept the
> rejection letters.

From a basic economic point of view the hybrids are probably a poor option. The reason things have changed somewhat over five years ago are commitments the railroads have made to meet emission requirements, and in some cases subsidies that the states have provided to lower the purchasing cost. That means that simple economic evaluation of the operation is not enough.

If your proposal was for a road locomotive, forget it. A road locomotive will run for hours at full throttle when on a ruling grade or when bucking strong headwinds, so the surge capacity of the batteries is pretty well useless, and a full-size engine will be required.

There have been some suggestions that dynamic braking power could be captured in batteries, instead of being wasted as heat. Again, there might be some savings, but the increased complexity and cost of the locomotive will likely offset any savings, except if the price of fuel really takes off.