First ever electric rail car mover gets to work at Port of Baltimore [video]

The Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore has announced a first for the contemporary American maritime industry: a battery-electric rail car mover that can organize the rail yard without dirtying up the air around it.

Built by the Marmon Rail’s Italian Zephir division, the LOK 16.150E model rail car mover features an 80-volt rechargeable battery pack sending current to a pair of 40 kW (about 50 hp) high-torque brushless motors. That may not sound like a lot in a world of 650 hp Kias and 1000 hp Teslas, but it’s enough to generate a drawbar pull (read: towing force) of more than 39,000 lbs. … all while generating zero tailpipe emissions.

“At this terminal, the asset will be used to help with intermodal cargo exchange,” said Matt Stahl, Mid-Atlantic terminal general manager for global shipping gurus Wallenius Wilhelmsen, who operate the Zephir. “We can do it with our own asset, without any assistance.”

Wallenius Wilhelmsen is using the Zephir to move rail cars loaded with heavy lift, farm and construction equipment, and military cargo within the Dundalk Marine Terminal, and claims it will remove over 180 tons of harmful carbon emissions per year.

You can check out the promotional video released by the Port of Baltimore to celebrate the Zephir’s deployment, below, then let us know what you think in the comments.

Electrek’s Take

Historically-conscious readers already know that the key word in that first paragraph is contemporary, because the Zephir is very much a case of “what’s old is new again,” according to Freightwaves’ Stuart Chirls. Chirls explains that the Zephir, “harks back [sic] to battery-powered railcar movers built by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1912, rubber-tired ‘locomotives’ used to switch freight cars around the narrow streets of the Baltimore waterfront on track curvature too tight for standard motive power.”

If you want to learn more about the Pennsylvania Railroads’ 100-year lead on electric rail car switcher technology, check out this article on Railfan, which includes the photos below plus a whole lot more.

Don’t miss: they had license plates!

Rubber Tired Switchers

SOURCES | IMAGES: Port of Baltimore, via Freightwaves, Railfan.