On a job, I went to site which services these things. Heart breakingly, after they have stripped down, serviced, and rebuilt the massive diesel engine, they run it, flat out, for 8 hours and all that energy, which could power a good chunk of the town, is thrown away as heat in a load bank. Plumes of dirty diesel exaughst are common on site.
Some trains can be connected to the grid 24/7 through overhead wires and/or onboard reserve batteries. This grid could be powered by greener sources of energy.
![[meme] Trains are 100000x easier to electrify and automate than cars, so why does everyone keep talking about electric and driverless cars?](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/11c37658-7c32-4cc2-b12c-6ced348bd09d.png){kind=link}
Trains are electric. They use diesel generators to power the wheels.
On a job, I went to site which services these things. Heart breakingly, after they have stripped down, serviced, and rebuilt the massive diesel engine, they run it, flat out, for 8 hours and all that energy, which could power a good chunk of the town, is thrown away as heat in a load bank. Plumes of dirty diesel exaughst are common on site.
Some trains can be connected to the grid 24/7 through overhead wires and/or onboard reserve batteries. This grid could be powered by greener sources of energy.
Way way way way way better.