Analysis of positioning of wayside charging stations for hybrid locomotive consists in heavy haul train operations

Hybrid locomotive concepts have been considered as a step towards converting the railway industry into a green transport mode. One of the challenges in integrating a hybrid locomotive in the train consist is that the battery pack in the locomotive needs to be recharged during a long-haul trip which requires stopping of the train. A typical battery pack requires about 1 h to recharge which is unacceptable. With the improvement in the charging system, it is now possible that the same capacity battery pack could be recharged in 10–12 min which can be a competitive option for the railway companies. This paper proposes a method based on simulation to evaluate the positioning of charging stations on a train network. A typical example of a heavy haul train operation hauled by diesel-electric and hybrid locomotives is used to demonstrate the method by using simulation softwares. The result of the simulation study show that the method developed in this paper can be used to evaluate the state of charge (SoC) status of a hybrid locomotive along the track. It is also shown that the SoC status obtained by the simulation method can be further used to assess the positions of charging stations along the track at the design stage.