Eversholt Rail and Alstom have announced plans to fast-track the hydrogen train industry with a new £1m investment into British hydrogen trains, creating a new class of train, the 600 series.
Taking the Breeze hydrogen train plan to another level, this investment means that the Breeze will be ready for early deployment in the UK to meet the Government's need.
Breeze trains will be built at Alstom's Widnes Transport Technology Centre. Widnes will also become Alstom's worldwide centre of excellence for hydrogen conversion, creating over 200 engineering jobs in the North West.
Eversholt Rail has said that hydrogen trains are ideally suited to regional rail services on routes that are not currently electrified.
As Breeze will be the first UK train fleet to use the Class 6xx category, it will bear the classification ‘600'.
“It's time to jump-start the UK hydrogen revolution. With the Government looking to invest in green technologies, Alstom and Eversholt Rail have deepened our already extensive commitment to this job-creating technology with a further million-pound investment. This bold move to back the Government's ambitions on hydrogen means we are the only game in town if you want a shovel ready British hydrogen train. The Breeze is good to go, wherever the Government commits to upgrading Britain's railway with hydrogen trains,” said Nick Crossfield, Managing Director, UK & Ireland
Mary Kenny, CEO of Eversholt Rail, said “Eversholt Rail has a proud record of innovation in key rolling stock technologies and this further investment in the Breeze programme demonstrates our commitment to providing timely, cost-effective solutions to the identified need for hydrogen trains to support the decarbonisation of the UK railway”.
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The first Hydrogen Train to run in the UK is the HydroFLEX train. This has the number 799001, and was developed in partnership between Porterbrook and The University of Birmingham.
I wonder if it’s deliberate or pure coincidence that alternative fuelled trains will be called Class 6xx as the world’s first solar powered train which also uses batteries in Byron Bay,Australia is a Class 600 train made in 1949.
I assume AnnOminous still has a person walking in front of her car with a Red Flag.
No wonder we technically lag behind Germany and other Continental countries.
Germany still burns vast amounts of lignite to produce electricity and doesn’t intend to phase it out until 2035/8. You chose the wrong example there.
What about Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Could they too be interested in getting new “hydrogen” trains. Despite their railway lines have a different gauge.
The Class 600 “Breeze” sounds like it never existed and will be brand new to the UK’s railways once in service from several years later. Could see some used as freight & parcel express units and most of them as passenger regional trains that is to be converted into hydrogen MU and could be ideal to work in Southwest England, North of England, Wales, North of Scotland, Southwest Scotland and The Midlands.
Which I think it’ll be a good idea. As other areas (regions) in England and Wales are having newly built electric and bi-mode trains.
Hello AnnOminous
Absolutely fair point, we should all be aware of the cons and pros of new technology.
But for how long your comment will last on here is another thing, as this management do not seem to like controversial views, they just like to print ‘word for word’ press releases
(ie nothing thought up or worked on themselves)
I think these new Class 600 “Breeze” Hydrogen (Hybrid) trains could be ideal to run on the smaller branch lines in Northwest England, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Northeast England, Tyne & Wear, Southwest England, Devon & Cornwall, Bristol & Avon, The Cotswolds, North of Scotland, West & Southwest Scotland, North Wales, West & Mid Wales, The Chilterns, North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, East Yorkshire & Humberside, South Yorkshire, East of England, London & The Southeast, West Midlands and East Midlands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_600
Before anybody gets too excited about the “green” credentials of hydrogen trains they should do a little research into:
(1) How the hydrogen is produced (most comes from steam-reforming of methane which is highly energy-intensive and produces lots of carbon dioxide).
(2) The overall efficiency of converting electricity to hydrogen and then back again to power trains, compared to full electrification.
(3) The not inconsiderable practical difficulties and hazards associated with storing, transporting and containing the stuff.
Hydrogen-powered transport may be emission-free at the point of use but anyone who thinks it is truly “green” is delusional. The best you can probably say is there may be a financial case for it for lines where full electrification can’t be justified and it’s cleaner than diesel from the NOX and particulates emission point of view.
I guess that you ignore the fact that electricity generation is also affected by similar issues, and that there is massive environmental damage caused by the extraction of the rare earth minerals for making the required batteries too?
I also assume you missed the fact that there’s not even enough of those minerals known on the planet to create enough batteries to power the requried number of vehicles.
Anyone who thinks there is a one-size-fits-all perfect solution without draw-backs and problems that need ongoing improvement is delusional.
Of course electricity generation is affected by similar issues. My point was that converting electricity into hydrogen then converting it back to electricity to power a train is significantly less efficient than full electrification. I guess you missed that.
As for your point about rare earth minerals, see my comment in the thread mentioned by Rob Gibson above.
The tone of your comment is unnecessarily rude and argumentative, but at least we started a debate here – a rare thing for this site.
“The best you can probably say is there may be a financial case for it for lines where full electrification can’t be justified and it’s cleaner than diesel from the NOX and particulates emission point of view.” – well, that’s a pretty good “best”.
Yes it is, if your only criteria are (a) the arbitrarily high financial hurdles any business case for electrification must jump to satisfy the government (Grayling probably has a lot to answer for here!), and (b) no emissions at the point of use.
Unfortunately there are many other factors to consider from the environmental point of view, as I’ve tried to point out both here and elsewhere.
See also:
https://www.railadvent.co.uk/2020/07/worlds-first-passenger-train-hydrogen-filling-station-has-begun-being-built-in-bremervoerde.html
Great in theory but how often will they need refilling with Hydrogen, where will filling points be provided and how will they be supplied? Existing depots may not have space for new filling sidings and storage tanks and it’s all going to be very expensive to provide. Good luck with it, hopefully they’ve thought through the issues.