Thread by @jonworth

So @EvaMontemaggi alerted me to this piece about plans for hydrogen trains in Italy

The piece is misleading, so it deserves a thread to take it all apart...

#EUYearOfRail #Decarbonisation

railway-technology.com/news/aecom-ape…

First, the piece speaks of the "300km Apennine line [...] This track stretches from the town of Sansepolcro in the northern province of Arezzo to Sulmona in the central province of L’Aquila"

All right, so let's look that up on Open Railway Map, electrification layer

It's the line highlighted here...

And 🤯 half of it is electrified already! Blue is ⚡️, black is ⛽️

Dig into this a bit deeper, and the line is basically two parts - the northern part from Sansepolcro to Terni via Perugia - 151km ⚡️
it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrovia_…
And Terni to Sulmona - 164km ⛽️
it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrovia_…

So what trains even *run* here?

Well there are *no through passenger trains*

On the northern part no passenger trains between Sansepolcro and Citta' Di Castello

Citta' Di Castello to Perugia 🚆 is operated by a bus company - BusItalia - and can't be bought on Trenitalia site

Perugia-Terni, Terni-L'Aquila and L'Aquila-Sulmona are more regular regional trains

And there is no freight at all as far as I can tell

Back to the piece...

"Aecom noted that this line is ‘strategically important’ as it links numerous inland areas through four central regions.

A track’s section has not been electrified and is presently utilising diesel trains that will be replaced under the project."

So strategically important that it is single track and slow. And network manager RFI calls it "linea complementare a scarso traffico" - a complementary line with little traffic

As no overhead electric - hydrogen hybrid trains exist currently, the only way to do this "upgrade" would be to run electric trains between Sansepolcro/Citta' Di Castelle and Terni, via Perugia

And *something else* between Terni and Sulmona, via L'Aquila

In other words, contrary to what the article implies, this will be 151km of upgraded electrified railway, and 164km of something else. It logically will not be 300km of route with hydrogen trains as the piece implies!

So then we get down to the hydrogen vs. battery trains issue for the Terni to Sulmona, via L'Aquila part

Stadler's battery train has a 185km range
railway-news.com/stadler-flirt-…

And with L'Aquila 60km from Sulmona and 104km from Terni, an electrification island at L'Aquila would work

So here - just as on so many routes where you want to electrify a line without putting up overhead wires - both battery and hydrogen are options - something that is not even touched by the piece

So my diagram can help make sense of whether this is a sensible project or not - it looks borderline to me

https://twitter.com/jonworth/status/1468179150104150018

Decarbonising railways is important, but poor reports like this one don't help in that regard!

/ends