Which Preserved Lines have Electric Car Charging Points??

I think that one is pure electric and the other a hybrid.

 

I am sure a charging point at the Talyllyn or Festiniog would be worthwhile when there is an electric car that can get there from an English city.


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A parking meter controlled charging point with a nominal fee for parking/charging but with a high penalty charge could alleviate the problem of charging bay hogging.

 

Interesting discussion.

If the use of pure (as opposed to hybrid) electric vehicles becomes common, catering for them could become quite an issue for heritage lines (and indeed for all other visitor attractions where people commonly spend a day, after driving for some distance).

As others have pointed out, providing a basic charge point using an ordinary domestic socket is not the answer. It takes far too long to get a reasonable amount of charge that way. EVs require special fast-charging points.

Imagine the scenario - the remote Little Snoring and Lower Doghouses heritage line has large car-parks at both termini, to cater for its typically 200 car-borne daily visitors. But now, in 2030, about a quarter of them come in EVs (and this proportion is rapidly increasing).

So the railway needs to install .. at least 50 fast-charge points ??! How to pay for this? And who pays for the new heavy-duty connections to the National Grid that will surely be needed to supply all that power?

Have our political lords and masters thought all this through? I am by no means against a nationwide switchover to EVs, but it seems easy to underestimate the extent of the infrastructure changes it may require. Of course the above scenario would be very different if the 2030 punters mostly turn up in driverless taxis, able to go back to base and charge there; but really, is that going to happen? Crystal balls at the ready ...

 

Exactly the point I was making in my initial post. I think your 2030 for 25% of cars to be EV will prove to inaccurate. I'd say over 50% by that time, with a substantial Hybrid number on top

 

IMHO a lot depends on how long your visitors spend with you.

On the East Somerset Railway, with a round trip taking 30 mins, I suggest that a fast charger is needed. On the other hand on the WSR, a round trip will take at least 3.5 hours without any time at Minehead so I suggest that a 6kw charger would be more than enough. In my case if I had a Leaf I suggest that a standard 13A plug would do.

 

Just applying a bit of lateral thinking:

In our current petrol economy, the drivers of cars pay for their energy costs. The actual infrastructure to enable refuelling is provided by private concerns (i.e. the oil companies) that site refuelling stations at places presumably based on a calculation about the likely return on their capital investment from building the facility.

So fast forward to an all-electric future. The drivers of cars must surely still be liable for the cost of the energy they put into their cars. It also seems reasonable to me that specialist energy companies will provide the necessary infrastructure for refuelling, i.e. arrange the charging points and billing mechanisms. However, given relatively long charging times, the most sensible place to put the necessary equipment will be places where cars are stationary for a long time, rather than the current position where refuelling stations are placed in areas of high traffic flow.

Putting all that together, what I can see is companies who provide infrastructure of charging points at car parks. The energy provider will essentially rent land from whoever owns the car park (which could be a local authority, or a company car park, tourist attraction etc). Each parking bay would have a charging point: drivers would plug in and recharge while they were off doing something else, with payment taken from the driver automatically by electronic payment.

Which then leaves the capital expense: it will come, but it will start at car parks in cities, before gradually moving to more remote locations: heritage railways would probably be low down the pile (not least because for many such attractions, there may be fairly meagre traffic for five days of the week or during the winter, in which to offset the capital investment with only parts of the year being busy and therefore providing s return for the energy supplier.).

So the model I can see would not be heritage railways installing the infrastructure themselves: I can't see it is a sustainable model. Instead, there will be specialist energy retailers (maybe the current oil companies, or maybe new companies) who will rent land from the heritage railway (or other attraction) to install recharging points. The energy company will bear the significant capital expense and collect the income, and the land owner (i.e. heritage railway, if they still exist) will derive a modest rental income for providing the land.

Tom

 

I don't doubt for a minute they haven't, not least because the treasury derives a not insignificant amount of it's income from oil revenues and excise duty on fuels. As yet they haven't told us, the electorate, how they plan to make up the shortfall as electric vehicles become more popular, which I don't doubt they will as manufacturers produce vehicles which will appeal to an ever wider market ( who had a mobile phone / computer / satellite dish etc 20 years ago ? ). How the government decide to tap that income source will no doubt influence how and where charging points are provided and managed. Like Tom I see the broader long term rollout of those facilities being in the hands of a diminishing number of larger companies until it's barely distinguishable from the marketing of motor fuels today although the dedicated garage as we know it may well become a thing of the past since electricity, not being as volatile a fuel as petrol or diesel won't need a dedicated containment facility.

 

Council car park across the road from Bury Bolton Street station on ELR has one .

 

As all fossil fuels are running out and most steam railways use coal to power the attractions, in 50 years time there probably not going to be many steam locos still running maybe the of lack of charging points in carparks is not going to be much of a problem. maybe it's time to start looking at using electricity to boil the water in locos, 3 rail powered steam anyone ?

Colin

 

Good points.

Still a bit difficult to see how this would work in practice. The present model is that fuel retailers provide just a few filling stations and everybody within the catchment area drives to that place and fills up. The model works because one (quite expensive to provide) filling station can service a lot of customers; and filling up only takes a few minutes.

In an EV world, what happens? Will the energy company be able to afford to stick loads of charging points wherever cars are parked? It's probably right that they won't: and that heritage railways may be low down the list of priority sites to be equipped.

Also right is the point that others have made, that in an EV world the Government will be wanting to tax the energy that EVs use in charging. The present situation with relatively low energy costs for charging EVs surely can't be sustained in the long term.

 

No, a small nuclear reactor fitted to each loco would do the trick

 

Total rubbish!

Fossil fuels, particularly coal, are most certainly NOT running out. The UK, US and many other counties have plenty of easily accessible coal deposits available if the economics make it worthwhile to dig it up

What has changed is that society and Governments (with the notable exception of President Trump and his dumb supporters) want to move away from using them on a large scale basis due to the harmful effects on the environment. Yes that will mean that eventually sourcing coal for use in Steam locos will become more difficult and obviously cost more as time goes on.

 

Coal mining is an extractive industry so, yes, coal reserves are dwindling, but the known recoverable reserves will last way beyond the 50 years that you have cited. It is more likely to be economics that will provide any limit.

 

It would not cost a railway (or any other tourist attraction) much to provide one or a few outlets able to deliver a few kW each (e.g. standard 13 A outlets which can deliver about 3 kW). As pointed out above, that's no good for a fast charge, but quite good enough for a top up if the driver is spending a few hours there. Payment could be by an old-fashioned coin-in-the-slot electricity meter or a modern equivalent that takes plastic cards, or combined with the parking fee, e.g. so much per hour to park the car and draw 3 kW.

 

But how many bays would you need to cater for an entire trainload of passenger's cars?

 

Pure curiosity, but do the traction engines at the WSR Steam Fayre get free coal & water from the WSR/WSRA?

 

The Showman's engines could charge the EVs.

 

This does lead to interesting conjecture: what voltage do they generate? A 100 volts DC, I presume originally, but did it creep up? And if so how standardised
is it? Was a show or a tent with a film projector in it to itself with it own engine generating and did large fairs have any sort of temporary interconnection or
standby engine? What may have have been written and published on this?

The governors probably give a pretty steady voltage though, if not to modern grid and mains stabiliity, and the power control transistors with their
circuitry are standard for far more variable wind turbine output. It would be fun to make a suitable power conditioner - which could just involve a DC motor
belted up to an alternator high enough on a trailer to be out of harms way - go to a rally in an electric car and see if you could cadge a charge from someone.

 

I claim ownership of that idea

Might be an idea for Nissan/Renault to take up with a Traction Engine Rally