this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
474 points (95.2% liked)
Technology
59602 readers
3445 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There's little chance of that happening, but even if there was, they'd just use batteries for the acceleration phase. That's what hydrogen fuel cell trains do anyway, because the fuel cell can't produce enough power on it's own to accelerate the train from a stop, so they're used to charge batteries that allow it to do so.
The reason why there's little chance of that happening is there are already very many cargo trains powered by overhead lines. We've been doing it for 150 years and in continental Europe there are many sections of track that are entirely electrified because it made more economic sense than running a wasteful (compared to a steam power plant) diesel generator to power the already electric engines of the trains.