Hydrogen Cars, Vehicles and Infrastructure
by guest Blogger Stan Thompson Before 2014, the Caribbean island nation of Aruba will roll out the world’s first fleet of hydrogen hybrid, self-powered, rail transit vehicles. Los Angeles, CA, transit manufacturer TIG/m Modern Street Railways is building both the streetcars—resembling heritage open trolleys—and the hydrogen production infrastructure needed to power their fuel cells. Energy […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson Toronto (Ontario) Canada will be the location of the Eighth International Hydrail Conference (8IHC) on 11 and 12 June, 2013. The venue and the first of the slate of presenters will be announced shortly. The International Hydrail Conferences are annual gatherings of academic, government and rail industry experts to expedite […]
Continue ReadingPosted on November 1, 2012 By guest blogger, Stan Thompson What you won’t hear, but should, in news coverage about Hurricane Sandy and transit service interruptions is that hydrail—hydrogen fuel cell/battery hybrid—subway trains would be much less impacted by salt water flooding. That’s not to say subway service could have continued. Signaling, switching and many […]
Continue ReadingPosted on September 2nd, 2012 By guest blogger, Stan Thompson According to Wikipedia, Willie Sutton claimed never to have said the words that elevated him in history from a habitual law-breaker to authorship of Sutton’s Law. Sutton was a notoriously successful bank robber—the original “Slick Willie.” His notoriety earned him a famous, though apocryphal, interview […]
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 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 When the history of railway evolution in the first half of the twenty-first century is written, it may largely be a tale of two metals and their respective economics. Copper and hydrogen are both essential to the long-term economical delivery of electric power: copper to stationary applications and hydrogen to […]
Continue Readingby guest blogger Stan Thompson In my February 10, 2011, commendation of public broadcasting for its help in raising hydrail awareness, I failed to credit Ira Flatow’s excellent program, Talk of the Nation – Science Friday. On September 4, 2009, Ira ran a great segment on hydrail but never mentioned the technology by name. Web […]
Continue Reading(by guest author Stan Thompson) One of the first visionary US manufacturers to “get” the hydrolley concept has been Proterra Inc., the Golden, Colorado, (and now Greenville, South Carolina) manufacturer of state-of-the-art, Green-tech transit vehicles. Proterra’s founder, Dale Hill, shared a vision of a fuel cell streetcar with me way back in 2007. The next […]
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