Intramotev - Developing Self-Propelled Freight Cars

[C855B]

Stumbled into this little bit of local business news: https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/column/winning-stl/article_10990d82-512c-4cdb-b541-4359f5d4c9e3.html

The article has a St. Louis slant, but that's what this article series is about. Intramotev is developing a battery-electric system to retrofit existing railcars to make them self-propelled and mix them into the current fleet.

I'm going to put my impression right out here: until they have buy-in from the likes of UP, they're going nowhere. I'm not confident that the CEO, at least from the interview, has a grasp of what this would take to integrate into the national network. But he can dream, I guess.

[nkalanaga]

I can just see a few hundred thousand freight cars roaming the rails independently.  They might be able to avoid each other, but can you imagine the fun at grade crossings?

I know, that's NOT what they're working on - yet.  Similar projects have been in development for several years, and so far haven't had much interest shown.

[OldEastRR]

For you worried about zombie freight cars roaming the nation's rails, let's point out these devices are for intra-plant, captive, or terminal moves. So a company doesn't need to buy a second=hand deisel to shuffle the cars around on their plant property. I can see this used for steel mills and mines.

[nkalanaga]

Yes, that has been made clear in railroad industry news reports.  But I can still see a few issues. 

Who's going to throw the switches?  Sure, the cars can do it themselves, but that would require that all of the switch be powered; that they be remote controlled, probably by radio; and thus, they would be vulnerable to hacking.

How will the batteries be recharged?  Will the cars take themselves to the charger as needed?  Will they be able to do it all themselves, or will someone need to plug them in?