Solar Train

The interesting thing about Rail is that there is enough solar energy placed on the actual tracks to allow Trains to run.

One could place photovoltaic Solar Cells between the rails and collect enough electrical energy to make a train system work.

When we put this to our electrical team, of course, they rejected it straight away pointing out to the difficulties of maintaining that system.

What they proposed was using the railway sidings and running one thin (3M) rail of Solar Panels down the track.

Using 3m of railway sidings it costs $1000 per metre giving you about 400W
at current costs per metre. One mile of sidings like this gives you 640KW per mile at
a panel cost of $1.6M per mile. Add wiring and connection costs which
will double that cost.

You will need 4km of track sidings with cells to give you 1600KW which
will be enough to run our train at 120mph/200kmh.

- David Lyon -