Trains

Australian mining company Fortescue has acquired Williams Advanced Engineering, and announced the two companies' first joint green-tech project: a battery-electric "Infinity Train" that'll haul iron ore without ever needing to plug in or fuel up.

Why bother transferring between a bus and a train, if you could just stay in one vehicle that travels on both roads and tracks? That's the thinking behind a new dual-mode vehicle (DMV), which is slated to begin operations in Japan on December 25.

Diesel-electric locomotives can be easily converted to battery-electric, says a new paper in Nature Energy, at a 20-year cost that can beat parity if emissions costs are taken into account. And there will be other benefits, notably for the power grid.

While the inspection of railway tracks is an important task, such inspections have to be performed when no trains are nearby. The new rail-riding Staaker BG-300 Railway Drone offers an alternative, as it just flies off the tracks as trains approach.

China has produced the first of a new breed of maglev trains capable of speeds up to 600 km/h, or nearly half the speed of sound. It says these will be the fastest ground transport services available on the planet.

As it eyes the future of sustainable transport through the development of advanced batteries and hydrogen fuel cell technologies, General Motors is now expanding these ambitions to include the world of freight.

Rail technology company Wabtec has demonstrated a new form of electric train technology that could help lessen the environmental footprint of heavy-haul freight services, reducing fuel consumption of an entire train by 11 percent in an early pilot.

Earlier in the year, LG Display showed its vision for the aircraft cabin of the future, which included transparent OLED partitions. Now the company has installed the technology in subway train windows.

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.