Hydrogen Cars, Vehicles and Infrastructure
by guest blogger, Stan Thompson The Twelfth International Hydrail Conference next week (27-28 June 2017) in Graz, Austria, will be very different from the first of its kind in Charlotte NC, back in 2005. To begin with, our secondary objective now is to integrate the efforts of companies like Alstom Transport and China Railway Rolling-stock […]
Continue ReadingGraz, Austria — 27-28 June, 2017 by guest blogger, Stan Thompson It’s been a dozen years since former Mooresville, NC, USA, Mayor Bill Thunberg, Appalachian State University Research Anaylst, Jason W. Hoyle and I first undertook to midwife hydrogen fuel cell based railway traction into being. Our goal was mostly environmental but we also had a […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson If anyone out there is a friend of CNN’s Nadine Schmidt, please do five things: Buy Nadine a really nice steak dinner! Thank her for her excellent segment on hydrail April 12 (http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/12/technology/germany-hydrogen-powered-train/). Give her my eternal thanks for exhuming perhaps the deepest—and most regrettably—buried environmental story of the 21st century. Tell her about […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson 21 June, 2016: Today, Eva Grey, writing in Railway-Technology.com, described the quintessential model indicating where hydrail (hydrogen fuel cell railway) technology is headed. In her story, “German state thrusts hydrogen-powered hydrail into the spotlight,” Ms. Grey breaks the story of plans by the State of Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany to convert […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson This year’s “11-IHC” is the first event since the International Hydrail Conference series began in 2005 when a major focus of the agenda will be on hydrogen fuel cell passenger railway equipment already being manufactured and in service. (see http://www.hydrail.org) China now has two hydrail trams in production. One is […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson The Tenth International Hydrail Conference (“10-IHC”) came home to Mooresville, North Carolina, on June 22-23 and it was a resounding success for a number of reasons. Our twenty presenters were a delightful mix of pros from previous IHCs, academics, railroad professionals, VIPs and Brad Read, President of TIG/m, who built the hydrail […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson Dear Google: “hydrail” is really a word, and has been since at least February of 2004 when it appeared in an invited article in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy (volume 29, issue 4, page 438). It was used as early as 2003 in an invited presentation at the US DOT’s […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson About 12 years ago, when I first became interested in what’s now called hydrail (hybrid hydrogen fuel cell and battery railway traction), I caught a glimmer of the idea online from Germany in the State of Schleswig-Holstein. Someone there had seen that wireless electric trains could be powered by wind turbines via hydrogen […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson By fiddling with his oil faucets and natural gas valves, Vladimir Putin may be having the same unintended acceleration effect on Europe’s diesel-to-hydrail transition that John L. Lewis had on the coal-to-diesel transition in the USA during the last century. Recently I’ve heard two ambassadors from European countries explaining to American audiences what […]
Continue Readingby Guest Blogger Stan Thompson For three days this December, the 8th, 9th and 10th, the University of Birmingham UK will host the 50th anniversary celebration of the birth of High Speed Rail. The blessed event occurred in Japan in 1964 with the opening of Tokyo’s Shinkansen line. Many of the top experts in this most fascinating (and literally “dashing”) element of […]
Continue Reading