What Is A Freight Skate?
The Freight Skate was one of the winners in the First Of A Kind 2022 competition run by Innovate UK.
The Description In The First Of A Kind 2022 Winners Document
In this document, this is said.
Project No: 10039606
Project title: “Freight Skate” a self-powered freight bogie and platform
Lead organisation: TDI (EUROPE) LIMITED
Project grant: £400,000
Public description: Governments have recognised that the continued dependence on the motor/freight vehicles is unsustainable and that modal shift to low and zero-carbon public transport solutions, both for passengers and freight, is essential if legislative commitments to Net Zero are to be met.
The Freight Skate provides a sustainable, low cost, reliable and high-quality rail freight experience which will drive down emissions and increase profits to freight companies and assist in bringing about the much-needed modal shift from road to train. To achieve this objective, it required us to use different ways of thinking across every aspect of the programme – design, supply, build and system implementation. This approach has yielded the desired results.
The skate chassis was originally designed with steering axles for passenger trains. It is a unique and tested design which we believe lends itself to operating as an independent 4-wheel unit that can be virtually coupled to form a platform for 10′, 20′,30′ or 40′ containers. The study would also allow us to optimise loading for 9’6″ HC units; Three units could also be used to carry 2 x 40′ containers. An individual unit would carry a 10′ container.
TDI plans to commercialise the Freight Skate vehicle over the next 3 years, with the product entering freight terminal service in 2025.
My Thoughts And Conclusions
If you search the Internet for “Freight Skate” you find nothing, but I think the concept is a development of the TruckTrain, which I wrote about in The TruckTrain, as both concepts are from Coventry.
I really liked the TruckTrain concept, when I saw it earlier this year.
The Anonymous Widower 
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Pingback by First Of A Kind 2022 Winners Announced « The Anonymous Widower | November 17, 2022 |
Made me think of a system I first saw back in February and proposed by Parallel Systems set up by some former SpaceX engineers
Comment by fammorris | November 17, 2022 |
I think that both systems have advantages. I think the Coventry concept could run at 100 mph on routes like the GEML and mix it with the fast passenger trains. It’s also designed to be Turbostar size so could be go anywhere.
Comment by AnonW | November 17, 2022 |
Parallel systems (and hence similar systems) have been criticised as having several impracticalities–you can find videos on Youtube which explain further, but include safety, poor use of pathing capacity on busy lines, range, speed and so on. A poor reinvention of a train (in the same way that passenger personal pod transport is a poor reinvention of a train at any large scale, even the famous Morgantown pod system has to compromise in peaks).
Self powered multiple unit (MU) solutions like The truck train (and similar already mentioned on this website) are a better option in the niche cases where traditional loco hauled container wagons don’t quite fit the need. MU solutions being an evolution of well proven passenger MU technology, with the main drawback being fitting everything into a small British loading gauge.
Comment by MilesT | November 18, 2022 |