Metra is going to have progress rebuild a couple F40s into Battery units.
https://metra.com/newsroom/metra-create-battery-powered-locomotives
so now a B-B unit, Will it be AC or DC? Will it retain it’s blombergs? (The bogie that wouldn’t die) What gearing and what top speed?
How long has it taken them to come up with the SD70MACH? By the time they unveil the F40BAT (or some such) the Windy City will be nothing left but a crater.
Apparently would like 79 MPH top speed with 11 cars and 150 mile range per 08/18/22 Newswire.
SD70MACH are now expected in 2023. First is to be delivered by the end of 2022 per Railway Age.
https://www.railwayage.com/mechanical/locomotives/progress-rail-lands-metra-battery-locomotive-deal/
At the bottom of the article they mention the SD70MACH program.
I assumed that the fortuitous acquisition of much of the Amtrak California F59PHI fleet took much of the urgency out of the SD70MAC program…
Peter
Last year Railway Age had an article on Wabtech’s FLXdrive battery locomotive for freight service. In it, the stated the electrical output at full power was 30 or 40 minutes when operated independently. Charging time from “empty” to “full” for the first generation was 8 hours using a plug in cable. The second generation, the time was cut to 4 hours if an overhead catenary set up was used.
It seems to me, the freight battery units are expected to be used with conventional diesel-electrics. They can be recharged from the other units, including when in dynamic braking. It doesn’t appear that they are a to be used in only an all battery powered engine consist.
Either Metra isn’t being clear to the public on how these engines will be used, MUed to a conventional engine. Or they really believe what the salesman is saying.
Believing what the salesman says seems to be a bad habit at the class ones these days. I don’t think this was always so, but now it seems all they have to say is “You’ll save a lot of money if you use our product.” and the railroad buys it. Bugs and all.
Jeff
Well, That may be true, but EMD actually has Joules in full time revenue service. Wabtec does not have FLXdrive locos in fully time revenue service. So EMD has a bit of a lead on real world feedback. As far as I know those Joules down in south America are running without any diesels
The specs for the locomotives aren’t 100% equivalent, but I see the FLX states top speed of 75MPH while the Joules that are currently available specify 50MPH.
If we assume that the JOULE spec sheet is referring to MW-Hours then the Joules seem to be more energy dense. At least to the FLX spec sheet on Wabtec’s webpage.
Unfortunately the FLX test was(or is) done Barstow to Stockton, so they never made it up to Roseville.
Metra is approaching this rather cautiously, with three conversions ordered with options for three more. Suburban service is a short haul so this may be a reasonable test for a straight battery locomotive in the real world.
Sheesh, in three and a half years RPS in Fullerton could have built prototypes, demonstrated if the proof of concept was sound, fixed the bugs, and be lined up to build the series production.
And the locomotives would work as intended, probably not something that could be said about Progress innovations. I sincerely hope I am proven wrong about that.
Does RPS have a customer deployment? I don’t recall.
When did EMD anounce the Joule and when did it first deploy down south? I don’t think they’ve been exactly slow on this. GE/Wabtec seems to be in slow motion in terms of getting something more than test units out.