With gentle jerking of the four driving engines of the traffic red locomotive put to the witness: train number 51585 starts on a wet and cold December morning, in the freight train station in Mainz-Bischofsheim. At the top: locomotive 145 046 of DB Cargo, built in the year 1999 by the then Daimler, a subsidiary of Adtranz. Their task is to empty the car and bring to Limburg. 474 tons is the weight of the load. This is pretty easy for the 4200 kW (5710 HP) locomotive.

by the Way, the locomotive will also save electricity. Because of the DB group has set itself the target of halving its carbon dioxide emissions from 2006 to 2030. By 2050, the railway is to travel completely emission-neutral. The freight transport is considered here as an important lever, because the transport weights are significantly larger than in the tourist traffic. Even today, the freight rail produces only a quarter of the carbon dioxide that is a typical truck produced during the Transport of the same Tonnage over the same distance, it is in the DB.

What does that mean exactly? In the case of DB Cargo in Germany, with a market share of almost 60 per cent of rail freight transport, makes the following statement: Would have been settled in 2017, all of the transportation services of the freight train (close to 93 billion ton-km) on the road, would fall approximately five million tons of carbon dioxide more than for rail transport. The reality, however, is not one-to-one transfer. Because the truck brings its cargo pretty directly from the Start to the goal, while the track in the pre – and post-rail transport is often dependent also on the truck.

Despite the now good life cycle assessment of goods transport to Rail even more environmentally friendly. This also applies to our train. In order to drive as efficiently as possible and at the same time on time, driver quays Soori right at the top of the guide is a gray box. This is the interface between the driver and the System-Leader (Locomotive Engineer Assist Display and Event Recorder). On the Monitor a graph of the optimized pace, as well as the topography for the next few miles on the road. The current journey history on the left is shown as the second curve.

in October 2016, the German railway company, Knorr-Bremse has developed a solution in your freight trains. At the beginning of 300 locomotives were converted, says Niels Weigelt, the Overall project Manager driver assistance systems at DB Cargo. We currently have 500 machines a total of about 1300 E-locomotives in the fleet of DB Cargo with a Leader equipped by the end of 2019, it should be 650. “We have Weigelt modern electric drive vehicles, which can feed power back,” says. The two systemloks 185 series as well as the high-performance locomotives (6400 kW duration power) series 152 are in addition to the series 145.

The cost of that much energy

The Leader-proposals from the topography of the route (the data is coming from DB Netz) and the schedule of the train is calculated. This roadmap is also in the electronic Ebula System, each locomotive (Electronic book timetable and speed restrictions). However, there are only the maximum speeds are specified, the hazards may be. It would make sense, on the other hand, to leave the locomotive running slowly and to avoid, in particular, to Accelerate. The cost of that much energy.