Hydrogen Cars, Vehicles and Infrastructure
Features information on hydrail or hydrogen railway trains including hydrolley (hydrogen trolley) and other H2-powered rail vehicles.
By guest blogger, Stan Thompson The Centre for Railway Research and Education at the University of Birmingham, UK, hosts this year’s International Hydrail Conference (IHC) on 3 and 4 July and the trend is clearly toward putting hydrogen on the main line. Hosting the Hydrail Conference in the UK was the idea of U. Birmingham […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson The 7th International Hydrail Conference (“7IHC”) will be held one week later than originally planned so that conferees at an important German rail conference can attend both events. During the 20th century, coal-fired steam locomotives gave way to diesel and external electric traction power. Now, in the 21st, diesel and […]
Continue ReadingIn September 2008, I had first talked about South Africa trying to market platinum for fuel cells worldwide. You see, South Africa mines about 80-percent of the world’s supply of platinum and would like to continue selling this expensive metal long into the future. But, it hasn’t been until recently that South Africa has actually […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson Unless you have access to Dr. Who’s TARDIS or H. G. Wells’ Time Machine, you’ll have to depend on old texts to envision William Murdoch’s 1784 steam locomotive debut in Britain or Peter Cooper’s Tom Thumb, the first locomotive to run in America. But if you can afford an air […]
Continue ReadingBy guest blogger Stan Thompson It’s way too easy to miss really important events in the history of hydrogen railroading if they don’t contain the magic searchable word “hydrail”. I missed a huge one last month: the demonstration of Europe’s (and perhaps the world’s) first hydrail train—or maybe the first hydrolley—now planned for regular passenger […]
Continue ReadingBy guest blogger Stan Thompson The University of Birmingham, UK, will host the next International Hydrail Conference there in the summer of 2012 in cooperation with Appalachian State University. Dates and details will be available in late September, 2011, on the hydrail web site of the Energy Center at “App State” in Boone, North Carolina: […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson Perhaps the single greatest impediment to the advent of the hydrogen economy has been the media-led insistence that hydrogen fuel cell technology is an automotive design experiment that has not yet been made to work. The ubiquity issue—the controlling obstacle unique to the car application—is never examined. Mention hydrogen and […]
Continue ReadingI had the pleasure of speaking with and interviewing Stan Thompson, Chairman of the Hydrogen Economy Advancement Team (HEAT) and the force behind the largest hydrail website on the Internet. Here is the interview: HydroKevin (HK): How did you come to the decision to pull the plug on this year’s hydrail conference? Stan Thompson (ST): […]
Continue Readingby guest columnist Stan Thompson You are so unlikely to believe this that I’ll let Google tell you; enter this search argument in your browser: copper + church + (steal OR stolen OR theft) As of this writing, that entry nets well over ten million Google responses and over five million from Yahoo. An EPA […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson When asked “How’s your wife?” Henny Youngman famously quipped, “Compared to what?” Lately I’ve been conflicted by the flurry of interest in High Speed Rail and the several states whose governors have “just said ‘no thank you.’” My hunch is that they may have made the right call for the […]
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