 |
 |
Pulling Trains Greenward
Submitted by Josh Stephens on December 11, 2007 - 1:40am.
The coolest thing I’ve seen all day was at the “Green Freight Initiatives” session in which Sandy Shapery of Southern California Transportation Solutions introduced the concept of magnetic propulsion.
By definition, anything that can send Maverick and Goose screaming towards the Soviets at 300mph is cool. If it can do nearly the same thing with a freight train – without creating greenhouse gas emissions – then that’s even cooler. Well, at least AS cool.
Magnetic propulsion uses a linear array of magnets laid between train tracks. By magnetizing in sequence, they can pull a train forward by magnetically grasping a metal rail on the underside of the train. The train, then, is engineless, and the tracks provide the propulsion. Unlike the controversial and as yet unperfected maglev, in which trains hover on a magnetic cloud, magnetic propulsion can operate with conventional trains and conventional tracks. It has been used experimentally on aircraft carrier decks in which it has launched 25 metric ton fighter plans to flight speeds in as much time as it takes to blink.
The green consequences of this technology are vast: by using electricity rather than diesel, it eliminates mobile emissions and gains efficiency by being part of the overall power grid. Moreover, magnets need only be charged while the train is immediately overhead; otherwise, the tracks are inert and use no energy.
As long as magnetic propulsion is not too good to be true, then it deserves a serious look from the transportation sector, which emits over 25 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions and spews other pollutants over communities unfortunate enough to be located in freight corridors. In past generations, ideas this good – clean, simple, silent, relatively inexpensive – would be dismissed, perhaps because of, if not merely in spite of, their environmental value. In this new age of green business and impending cataclysm (far more threatening than those Soviets ever were), such cavalier attitudes will no longer fly.