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wasoxygen  ·  1518 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Plutocrat punch down

Today’s trains, running on electricity produced at a remote power plant, are cheating a bit. They can still be coal-fired, but the coal and furnace are not on the train.

A battery locomotive brings the power plant along. Take today’s heavy-duty electric train, remove half the cargo cars and replace with battery-filled cars. That should be plenty of energy for the long haul. There could be cost reasons why this is not feasible, but it doesn’t seem like an engineering impossibility.