5 ms·
Battery-electric "Infinity Train" will charge itself using gravity
- drob518 1y agoThere are a couple of good undergraduate physics final problems buried in here.
- rich_sasha 1y agoAs a strict matter, this is non-renewable energy.
- 6510 1y agoThey use to do this with mining carts. "One" goes down the hill full while pulling the empty "one" back up.
- AngryData 1y agoNorway I believe it was has also had energy positive mining trains for awhile as they mine up in the mountains, load it up, and bring it down to the coast using electric generators for brakes.
- looofooo0 1y agoI wonder that in certain parts of the world, the train network could become net positive electrical contributor by mining stones in quarries up the mountain? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVaWmEI9O1w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVaWmEI9O1w
- eru 1y agoDepends on what you measure, I guess? Ie I don't think you have enough excess energy to pay for the actual quarrying itself. (Though you might be able to become energy positive if you take water as a ballast, not stone. Water is easier to pump into some tanks.)
- looofooo0 1y agoWell inner mine transport can be net positive as well with electrical mining trucks. Then you need the energy for explosives and stone cutting, which needs further investigation, whether this can be offset by the energy gained of the stones travelling downhill. Water should be better used for hydroelectrical production.
- eru 1y ago> Water should be better used for hydroelectrical production. Well, putting water on a downhill train _is_ hydroelectrical production. Just a very cumbersome way. The stone could be called lithoelectrical production.
- occz 1y agoThe things people will do to avoid putting up catenaries truly are wild.
- lukan 1y agoBecause it is a huge investment, that also has maintainance costs. This train on the other hand seems superior in every way for this specific use case (getting ore from high altitude to low altidude and empty trains back up)
- unwind 1y agoIt's Australia, the rail line is 143 km (89 miles). Putting up poles and hanging catenaries over that kind of distance is probably not cheap? Either way it sounds brilliant, both simpler and better than catenaries, I like it!
- brnt 1y agoHow come Soviets electrified all rail? It wasn't because they're swimming in money...
- lukan 1y agoNo, but they were swimming in cheap labour.
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- vkou 1y agoBecause prior to them, Russia was a backwater with anemic infrastructure, and they started massive greenfield infrastructure projects at a time that the technology was mature.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoA quick google says they hauled about 60% of their cargo with electric locomotives, 70% of passenger traffic. Currently about 51.5% of modern-day Russia's 105.000 km rail network is electrified. Compare with others on this chart (which seems to omit Russia for some reason): https://www.itf-oecd.org/transport-connectivity-trends-compared https://www.itf-oecd.org/transport-connectivity-trends-compa.... TL;DR, they did not, in fact, electrify all rail. As for your swimming in money comment, I'm not sure what you mean; the Soviet Union was an industrial powerhouse and the second largest economy in the world between WW2 and the mid-80's, its economic decline only started after that with economic liberalisation under Gorbachev, followed by both oil price collapse and the costliest disaster in human history (until then), the Chernobyl incident, both in '86. Japan overtook it as the 2nd largest economy only by 1990.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoI started reading this with cynicism because lololol magic electricity from nothing, but no, if it goes down while full and up while empty it could work. And of course they can hook up a diesel engine if it doesn't properly work.
- ryao 1y agoI had the same thought, only to read the detail about the train being empty on the return trip, which would make this feasible. If they devise a grid tie system using a third rail to receive/transmit power, they could avoid placing a battery on the train and excess energy could be provided to the grid, which would be even more cost effective. Even if they opt out of connecting to the grid, the battery could be located at a stationary location rather than carried by the train, which should reduce the train’s permanent mass, lowering the size of the battery needed.
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- pjc50 1y agoHigh-power grid connections are surprisingly expensive. I would expect that it's been done this way because it's now the cheapest non-diesel option.
- algo_trader 1y agoThis isnt HVDC.. Industrial locomotives are ~10MW and 12kV or similar. So the entire ..err ..drive train is probably $10M? And the regen is free? But you have to step-up and -down to the battery? Maybe a more informed reader can.. ahem... step in and inform us?
- sandworm101 1y agoThe bigger issue is size. A train can brake at each car, not just the locamotive. So that means hundreds of regenerating electric motors spread across the train. Dump that all to a collective "third rail" and all manner of electrical havoc will begin as out-of-phaze motors start driving each other to do the wrong thing.
- samrus 1y agoWhat if the train need to go uphill loaded and downhill empty?
- pjc50 1y agoI suspect there's a maintenance depot somewhere near the bottom station, which is likely to have a charger. It's just that's not the routine use case.
- drob518 1y agoOr you keep a diesel generator on the locomotive itself, making it a sort of hybrid.
- atomic_cowprod 1y agoDiesel locomotives are already hybrids (pretty much all diesels built since the mid-20th century are diesel-electric). I imagine that a generator large enough to charge up a locomotive would add too much extra weight to the design, however I could see a modified diesel locomotive being utilized to both push a dead electric train and to at least partially recharge that train's batteries during the journey.
- sidewndr46 1y agoDiesel-electric drivetrains are not "hybrids" in the sense that they have an energy storage device. The same type of drivetrain was used in submarines and tanks during WWII, no one calls those a hybrid.
- pmontra 1y agoYou keep a diesel locomotive at hand. They probably need one to move along the track to do repairs. Not sure if it's got enough HPs to move ore back, but anyway, why should they want to put ore back into the mine? Sending equipment yes, but it's probably light enough to travel on the return train.
- pif 1y agoThis is old news in Scandinavia.
- kzrdude 1y agosvk.se (Swedish grid operator) is listing current statistics for energy production and has the category 'Not Specified': > Unspecified production includes, for example, gas power, wave power and braking power. Production from plants with more than one production type and where these can not be separated is also included in this category. Braking power refers to regenerative braking, energy that's put back on the grid from the electric trains. Presumably from the iron ore trains from up north. Unfortunately it does not list exactly how much of the 'Not Specified' is from braking power alone. Generation in this category as we speak is 589 MW.
- helloguillecl 1y agoA clearer title for this would be: Battery-electric "Infinity Train" will charge itself using potential energy. (Potential energy being stored in the position of the mined ore)
- khelavastr 1y agoAn elevator with more steps. Still cool.
- goodcanadian 1y agoI am too lazy to find a source, but I saw a similar thing a few years ago with an electric mining truck (recover enough energy going downhill loaded to go back uphill unloaded).
- Cerium 1y agoI was able to find that they were probably Hitachi trucks, but could not find the source we are likely thinking of.
- masklinn 1y agoFortescue has been testing a mine truck capable of that for a year or two (it was built with liebherr).
- wumms 1y agohttps://electrek.co/2024/02/05/hitachi-abb-complete-fully-electric-244-ton-electric-prototype/ https://electrek.co/2024/02/05/hitachi-abb-complete-fully-el...
- goodcanadian 1y agoPossibly. I feel like I saw something much longer ago. Might have been this one: https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a28748306/worlds-largest-electric-vehicle-dump-truck/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a...
- ginko 1y agoThere's that one train line carrying ore from Northern Sweden down to the Norwegian coast that is net-positive in energy-generation.
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- twobitshifter 1y agoUsually mines end up deep underground and require a lot of energy to get the materials to the surface and loaded on to the train. However once you’ve achieved that it is possible to just let gravity carry you back to sea level.
- bluGill 1y agoPartially true. Mines tend to be underground, but often they are in mountains or other high ground and so the ore overall is moving downhill.
- sandworm101 1y agoFyi, virtually all diesel locamotives already employ regenerative braking. They just send the electricity to resistors, turning it into heat. The amount of energy is simply staggering. No battery tech can absorb the power fast enough. Its funny that this train is in australia. Only on a very flat run will braking be so slow that power can be stored efficiently. https://youtu.be/cIQ0yIZgQeE?feature=shared https://youtu.be/cIQ0yIZgQeE?feature=shared
- sidewndr46 1y agoIf it's just being dumped into a resistor bank that isn't really regenerative. I guess if you used it for cabin heat or something that'd be useful however.
- wumms 1y agoArticle is the announcement from 2022, now they unveiled the prototype: https://electrek.co/2025/06/21/fortescue-infinity-train-electric-locomotive-never-needs-fuel-or-charging/ https://electrek.co/2025/06/21/fortescue-infinity-train-elec... Posted 3 days ago (12 points, 1 comment): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44339903 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44339903