PITTSBURGH — Wabtec Corp. showed off its fully electric and battery-operated locomotive on Friday at its Freight 2030 Mission to Net Zero event in South Oakland.
It’s the first time the Pittsburgh-based company brought the train engine to the region as it has previously been undergoing testing exclusively and in partnership with BNSF Railway in California.
Named FLXdrive, Wabtec’s heavy-haul, battery-electric locomotive is the first in the world to be powered solely by rechargeable batteries, which clock in at a combined 2.4-megawatt hours on this particular engine. Wabtec’s testing of FLXdrive in California spanned 13,000 miles of track across three months of revenue operations for BNSF. Working in tandem with regular diesel engines, Wabtec said its FLXdrive locomotive reduced fuel by 11%, a savings of more than 6,200 gallons of diesel fuel and resulting in an estimated reduction of 69 tons of CO2 emissions.