Challenges Loom for Electric Ideas

"You at least have to start with a dual locomotive."

BNSF Railway is finding that if U.S. freight railroads want to run electric trains, they face big challenges in how to shift out of their current all-diesel locomotive fleets.

Matthew K. Rose, BNSF’s chairman, president and CEO, said his company has been talking with both major U.S. locomotive manufacturers about the options.

He did not name them, but the U.S. suppliers of big cross-country freight train engines are GE Transportation and Electro Motive Diesel. In recent months, Rose said, BNSF officials have been in “conversations with the locomotive manufacturers around looking at … what would an integration path for electrification be?”

From a technology standpoint, it is “absolutely” doable, he said, especially if BSNF wanted to simply buy all-electric freight engines.

BNSF appears to prefer a dual-mode power unit that can burn diesel when it needs to, but operate on electricity when parts of the track are linked to the transmission grid. Right now, that does not exist for freight systems.

Some Northeast intercity passenger trains use dual-mode engines, but builders say those are lower-horsepower units than freight would need and so a new freight-specific model would need to be developed.

Rose said running electric-only engines on electrified track sections would either mean changing out locomotives when a train reaches that area, or converting large sections of the network and equipment all at once.

“We’re really concerned about the thought of having to do a total turnover, changeover, so we’re really convinced you have to start at least with a dual locomotive,” he told The Journal of Commerce.

Rose said that “yes, that locomotive can be developed. No, it’s not in widespread use anywhere in the world and, yes, it’ll be a lot more expensive than either a pure diesel locomotive or certainly a lot more than just an electrified locomotive. So we’re thinking through that, and again having some conversations.”

He said BNSF has not asked manufacturers to start preparing anything. “We have really just had conversations with the locomotive guys, and one of them more than the other.”