A Sighting Of The Two Coradia iLint Hydrogen Trains
I finally got to see the two Coradia iLint trains, parked at Bremervörde station.
On bahn.de they were talking about weather warnings, so perhaps Alstom and the operator were just being prudent. After all they didn’t want another Hindenburg disaster!
Not that there’s much chance of that these days when modern materials are used to build safe methods of hydrogen storage.
The Anonymous Widower 
So they weren’t actually in use? Took a quick look at German media but couldn’t find any coverage of why not.
https://mobile.twitter.com/AlstomUK reports that Chris Grayling visited their stand at InnoTrans. Also claims that 1 wind turbine could supply 4 or 5 trains.
Also see that the Halton Curve service has been postponed from December to May (grr!) due to ‘lack of trains’, so perhaps that’s an opportunity for Alstom 😉
Comment by Peter Robins | September 25, 2018 |
I think the trains weren’t running because of the weather. I did see one earlier with passengers on, but they got off. Perhaps, it was pprudence or it might have been something more serious. I did talk to a couple of school.students later and they’d ridden the hydrogen trains a couple of times.
There’s not much traffic on the North Wales Coast Line and it would make an ideal test track, so even if it doesn’t provide a passenger service, I suspect it could be used to teat the trains.
Comment by AnonW | September 25, 2018 |
I’ve just found the timetable for the iLint on the operator’s website – quite well hidden 😉
Click to access Fahrplan_iLint_24.09.pdf
Comment by Peter Robins | September 26, 2018
PS another German report I found states that the initial cost of the iLint is some 20-30% higher than the diesel equivalent, but total costs over the medium term are some 25% lower due to higher efficiency and lower maintenance costs. I assume that is diesel without batteries/regenerative braking, so it would be interesting to know how the iLint would compare in running costs compared to a diesel hybrid.
Comment by Peter Robins | November 20, 2018 |