Will Battery-Powered Trains Change The Future Of UK Rail Travel?
The title of this post, is the same as this article on the BBC.
This is the sub-heading.
A near £1bn investment will see the UK’s first battery-electric trains for long-distance main line services built in Derby, which Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said will “bring faster, more reliable journeys to the north”
These are the first two paragraphs.
The new trains will replace diesel power with electricity, and seek to cut journey times by up to 10 minutes between Manchester and Leeds, and up to 14 minutes between Manchester and York.
So are batteries set to drive forward a new electric future of train travel in the UK?
Alstom’s press release and other sources on the order, add more details.
- The trains will be based on the Adessia platform.
- There will be 29 five-car trains.
- It looks like they will replace the 51 three-car Class 185 trains.
- Wikipedia says they are 110 mph trains.
- The trains will be British-designed and built.
The trains will have level boarding at every door, of which the BBC article has a visualisation.
The BBC article has a long section about battery trains and is well-worth a full read.
The BBC explains how the trains will charge their batteries.
- On electrified sections the batteries will be charged from the overhead wires.
- According to Alstom, when the train brakes, the electric motors “work in reverse as generators, which captures braking energy”, which would normally be lost as heat energy.
- This will also be fed back into the on-board battery.
- The manufacturer added rapid charging facilities would also be installed as part of the contract at stations in Hull, Scarborough and Saltburn.
This is all proven technology, which is used all round the world and on Merseyrail in the UK.
The Anonymous Widower 