An accumulator railcar (also "accumulator car" or "accumulator railbus") is an electrically driven railcar whose energy is derived from rechargeable batteries that drive its traction motors.
The main advantage of these vehicles is their clean, quiet operation. They do not use fossil fuels like coal or diesel fuel, emit no exhaust gases and do not require the railway to have expensive infrastructure like electric ground rails or overhead catenary. On the down side is the weight of the batteries, which raises the vehicle weight, and their range before recharging of between 300 and 600 kilometres. Accumulator cars have a higher purchase price and running cost than petrol or diesel railcars and need a network of charging stations along the routes they work.
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Experiments with battery-electric railcars were conducted from around 1890 in Belgium, France, Germany and Italy. In the USA, railcars of the Edison-Beach type, with nickel-iron batteries were used from 1911. In New Zealand, a battery-electric Edison railcar operated from 1926 to 1934. The Drumm nickel-zinc battery was used on four 2-car sets between 1932 and 1946 on the Harcourt Street Line in Ireland and British Railways used lead-acid batteries in a railcar in 1958. Between 1955 and 1995 DB railways successfully operated 232 DB Class ETA 150 railcars utilising lead-acid batteries.
In 1887 the first German accumulator cars were placed in service by the Royal Bavarian State Railways. Their development continued with the pre-Second World War classes ETA 177 to 180, the post-war DB Class ETA 176 and finally ended with DB Classes 150, 515 and 517. The latter were used until 1995 having been since modernised into the Nokia ETA, painted light grey and green and deployed onto the so-called Nokia Railway (timetable number RB 46), nowadays the Glückauf-Bahn from Gelsenkirchen via Wanne-Eickel to Bochum.
Accumulator railcars used by British Rail included the British Rail BEMU and British Rail Class 419. The Class 419 could work either on batteries or a third rail.
The Edison-Beach battery rail car was developed by Thomas Edison and Ralph H. Beach. The latter headed the Railway Storage Battery Car Company and the Electric Car & Locomotive Corp [1]. Car #105 of the Alaska Railroad was an Edison-Beach car [2]. A notable feature of the Edison-Beach cars was the Beach drive system. Each wheel was mounted on ball bearings on a dead axle and was driven by an individual traction motor through gearing [3].
In addition to accumulator railcars there are also accumulator locomotives that are used on underground trains, for mining and industrial duties. Examples include the London Underground battery-electric locomotives.