Raillogix and Railrelease, both part of the Rotterdam-headquartered Rail Innovators Group, offer diesel-free reefer transportation. RailFreight.com reached out to Raillogix to have a chat about their end-to-end service using Railrelease’s “power wagons”. They call it “the only real sustainable way to transport reefer containers.”
Reefer containers allow for temperature-regulated freight transportation, which is essential to preserve the quality of various types of products during transport operations. It is also more costly than regular transportation: the power to regulate the temperature in containers is typically provided by diesel generators, otherwise known as gensets. That costs money, but there’s also a hidden environmental cost.
“Our power wagons provide an alternative to that”, explains Bram Roosendaal, project manager at Raillogix for Cooltrain, the associated end-to-end logistical service that deploys the group’s power wagons.
“A reefer container needs power, much like an ordinary fridge. Instead of using old-fashioned diesel generators to provide power to the reefer container, we have developed a wagon that uses a hydraulic system comparable to a dynamo.” As soon as a train starts moving, the power wagons generate electricity, deliver it to a battery, and from there it powers the container.
Diesel generators cannot offer the same
“It is the only real sustainable way to transport reefer containers”, says Roosendaal. “In principle, it has net-zero emissions. By contrast, road transportation and the traditional gensets cannot offer the same”. Roosendaal explains that Cooltrain could be more cost competitive than the old ways, but he concedes that it depends on the context of the transport operation.
Cooltrain also boasts a number of benefits in terms of the maximum payload. “The maximum limit for the weight of containers is higher on the rail than on the road. But not only can you transport more per container on the rails, when you have intermodal transport where the first and last mile are done via the road, you can also put a higher weight on those trucks than usual”, says Roosendaal.
Successful first version
Are there any downsides to the power wagon? “Well, we see that a lot of customers are afraid that the battery might drain. That is because the power wagon is not generating any power once a train is standing still”, says Roosendaal. The wagon’s battery has enough capacity to provide power to the reefer containers, even during length idling periods.
It seems that the power wagon – and the associated end-to-end solutions “Cooltrain” by Raillogix – is already a fairly successful endeavour. “There are quite a lot of them already on the rails. But that is the current version, with the battery installation in the middle of the wagon”, comments the Cooltrain project manager.
New version in the works
“We are working on a new version. It is essentially the same system as what we have now, but we are hiding the box with the batteries and the system in the frame”, explains Roosendaal. “We are investing more into this new format, the ‘power wagon underfloor’.”
The new design should help boost battery capacity and reduce sensitivity to damage. It will be on display at Munich’s Transport & Logistics Fair in June.