American rail operator, Genesee & Wyoming (G&W) is planning on piloting the use of autonomous battery-powered wagons on two short lines in Georgia. Using technology from Parallel Systems, the vehicles could be used to transport containers to and from the coastal port of Savannah, moving them inland with the goal of reinvigorating rural railways and removing lorries from the roads.
G&W has applied to the Federal Railroad Administration to undertake the trial on its Georgia Central Railway and Heart of Georgia Railroad subsidiaries which covers rail lines from Savannah to Midville and nearly 500 miles of track.
Parallel Systems was founded by former Space X engineers and has been developing battery-electric rail vehicles since 2020 with its stated goal of moving freight from the road to rail. The Automated Battery-Electric Vehicles have been developed alongside an associated train control system and has been funded in part by the Department of Energy (DOE)…
Continue reading, to watch short videos, & for article, author credits
Various YouTubers have savaged the technical concept, I think correctly. Easily found by searching.
Parallel systems is to railways what Musk’s “Boring company” is to removing traffic congestion (evidenced by the pilot tunnel in Las Vegas).
It’s better than it was: at least they’re now proposing an underframe to link the bogies, making them wagons, rather than assuming that the boxes will cope with the buffing loads – which of course they are not designed to do. So they’ve corrected that rookie error…
And at least they’re trying it out in what appears to be a real operational environment, unlike The Boring Company’s low-speed low-capacity manually driven Teslas.
I thought these were autonomous powered wagons so no buffering any coupling was to be virtual even if only half metre separation.. The challenge was last mile class 3 short-line railroads where you either send out a crewed loco or transfer to road haulage for maybe one single box.
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Aleks, the videos in the linked article show several boxes travelling together with no separation, so there has to be some sort of coupling. A virtual coupling may work in tension, but what about in compression, e.g. hard braking (braking distances are said to be substantially shorter than for traditional trains) or a collision, the possibility of which can never be ruled out?
@BB The first animation shows separate wagons being loaded. The crossing shows a packet travelling together under common control. This tech is being worked on across modes, Tesla are working on convoys, Lockheed on UAV swarms, Hyundai did a real life consumer demonstration 9 years ago at their California proving grounds which they dressed up to make it memorable – it’s a fun 3 min promo here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjhXE7DmnUs&pp=ygUOaHl1bmRhaSBjb252b3k%3D
It includes emergency braking. The collision risk is mitigated by Lidar, Radar, AI and the wagons are low speed. Crossings initially are under operator control, think of the CoOp home delivery bots that wait at pelican crossings if there are no pedestrians until a base operator guides it across the street.
Aleks, the collision risk may be mitigated but no-one has yet worked out how to eliminate it, and any safety authority worth its salt (eg the FRA) is going to require that that risk is identified and treated appropriately – at some stage wagons will hit each other, another rail vehicle, or an object such as a vehicle at a level crossing.
Looking at the latest videos on the Parallel Systems website https://moveparallel.com/product/, as well as having the underframe connecting the bogies on the platooning video there are also what look suspiciously like buffers at the ends of the bogies, which make physical contact with the end bogie under the adjacent box. If there are no buffing loads (there will always be the risk of them, see above), what purpose do these underframes and buffers serve?
That Hyundai video is interesting, but there’s a big difference between controlling a succession of light vehicles each several metres apart, and a succession of heavy vehicles that are in physical contact with each other (as the platooning video shows).
It is an interesting project to follow.
Parallel Systems readies 2nd-gen autonomous rail vehicle for test runs
https://www.trains.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Parallel-Systems-GW-FRA-Application.jpg
Testing schedule
https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/details-emerge-of-genesee-wyoming-plans-for-first-test-of-autonomous-container-equipment/
Some overlap with RoadRailers
https://www.triplecrownsvc.com/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/equipment-roadrailer-and-container
I was surprised they had a fleet of 6,000 plus reefers from Wabash at TripleCrown. This last generation dropped the weight penalty of rail wheels and run on separate bogies.
NS Triple Crown Roadrailers passing on the auto-parts run from Detroit to Kansas, no slack & container doors secure from theft as cannot be opened
https://youtu.be/hv7sSjE8i1g
The system description Tracks Ahead: Road Railers
https://youtu.be/ozqY3Ze4sAU