Trains

The first solar farm to provide power to a railway line in the UK was switched on today by Riding Sunbeams, 10:10, Community Energy South and Network Rail.

Researchers at EPFL have crunched the numbers on heat transfer in the air of train tunnels, and outlined a geothermal heat recovery system that could potentially supply heating and cooling to thousands of nearby homes.

High-profile British firm Foster + Partners recently completed work on a network of train stations in Saudi Arabia. Providing high-speed links between four cities, the buildings are designed to keep visitors at a relatively comfortable temperature even during the scorching summer heat.

This train car is over 70 years old and has an interesting history that includes it being used during World War II and the Cold War. Now installed on some rural land in Maryville, Tennessee, it has been painstakingly renovated into a guest house and is available to rent on Airbnb.

Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), working with local firm A_Lab, has won an architecture competition to design two stations for a new metro line planned for Oslo, Norway. Construction on the line is due to begin in 2020 and the stations are expected to be completed by 2025.

Snøhetta and Dialog drew inspiration from local Chinook cloud arch formations when designing Canada's Calgary Central Library. The building is situated in a very challenging plot that incorporates an existing light rail track and wows visitors with an eye-catching timber-lined atrium.

The world's first hydrogen fuel cell-powered train has entered regular service in Germany with a two-car Alstom Coradia iLint taking to the tracks on Eisenbahnen und Verkehrsbetriebe Elbe-Weser's (EVB) Elbe-Weser network in Lower Saxony.

Those visiting the northern New South Wales coastline will have the chance to ride on new sustainably powered transport service. The Byron Bay Railroad Company is setting the wheels in motion for what it calls the world's first solar-powered train, whose roots can be traced back to World War II.

Funicular railways are cable-based train lines that shuttle carriages up steep inclines, and they don't come any steeper than the Stoosbahn that has just opened in Switzerland that connects the mountain village of Stoos to the valley below.

Mining giant Rio Tinto has been busy investigating autonomous train technology in the Australian Outback and has now completed the nation's first autonomous heavy haul rail journey as it looks for more efficient ways to move iron ore around the country.

If Amazon’s drone delivery service is to get off the ground, it’ll need some major infrastructure upgrades to support it. A new patent awarded to the retail giant could see drones being patched up and launched from mobile maintenance facilities carted around on the back of trains, trucks and ships.

A new DEMU train was officially entered into service by India's Minister of Railways Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu on July 14. The train left Safdarjung Station in south Delhi pulling six carriages topped with PV panels to meet the needs of its electrical systems with clean energy.