Low emissions is a phrase that’s bandied around the transport industry a lot at the moment, first sparked by the arrival of hybrid and electric vehicles in the latter part of the 1990s, when Honda and Toyota introduced the world’s first production hybrids.
We’re all familiar with the benefits of low emission cars and how important the emissions rating has become. Trains are a different proposition altogether, because if you attributed emissions to head counts, then trains are obviously doing a lot better job on being environmentally friendly than individual cars. But train technology has also advanced in recent years to reduce the amount of emissions produced by rail transport.
The development of the diesel genset locomotive has been crucial. This is where the diesel engine can switch itself off when not needed – a little like stop start technology in cars.
The actual fuel efficiency of a freight train in motion has vastly improved over the last quarter century. It’s possible for a modern locomotive to move a ton of freight over 400 miles on just one gallon of fuel. The main reason for trains being low on fuel efficiency and high on emissions is for the hours that trains spend idling, while their cargo is being loaded or unloaded in rail yards.
The genset switcher locomotives can be started as quickly as a truck, so there’s no need for them to stand idling and polluting the local atmosphere with particulates.
The development of the genset has resulted in 80% reduction of nitrous oxide and particulates, as well as reducing CO2 emissions by around 50%. This is achieved by monitoring the amount of time the engine remains idling and changing to a sleep mode when a period of inactivity has been detected.
Technology will keep making advances so that the emissions statistics of trains will drop even further as fuel efficiency rises. It’s just a question of time.
