RailPower's Green Goat hitting its stride

Railway Age, Dec, 2004

A little after two years since a prototype was tested, RailPower Technologies Corp. now has firm and conditional orders for 78 of its 2,000-hp Green Goat hybrid switcher locomotives. The company last month announced that a U.S. Class I has signed a letter of intent for 35 units to be delivered over a four-year period beginning in 2005. This is RailPower's first multi-year order.

Now that Green Goat production will need to be ramped up, RailPower has entered into an agreement with Wabtec Corp. and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Boise, Idaho-based MotivePower Inc., for component supply, engineering, and manufacturing and assembly. Under agreement terms, Wabtec will source and supply the majority of RailPower locomotive components, and MPI will assemble RailPower locomotives at Boise. MPI also will assist RailPower with integration engineering and assembly of new RailPower products, including a hybrid branch line locomotive.

"We need a strong U.S. manufacturing base," RailPower Executive Vice President Simon Clarke told Railway Age. MPI can source virtually every major component that goes into a Green Goat--trucks, traction motors, compressors, diesel generators--whether those components are produced by a Wabtec subsidiary or a third-party supplier, and Wabtec "gives us a good pricing point for the U.S. market," he says. RailPower has been purchasing locomotive components from various Wabtec divisions, among them cabs and control cabinets used on pre-production and early-production Green Goats manufactured in Calgary by Alstom at the former Canadian Pacific Railway Ogdendale Shop.

RailPower, which also has engineering facilities in Erie, Pa., under the RailPower Hybrid Technologies Corp. name, has been testing Green Goats with most of the U.S. Class I's as well with CN and CPR, and is building units for the U.S. military. The latter will be used at military ocean terminals on the West Coast, for moving munitions that are sensitive to the noise and heat that may be encountered with a conventional switcher. Railroads have been testing the Green Goat under various operating and environmental conditions; results so far have indicated a 40% to 70% reduction in greenhouse gases and an 80% to 90% reduction in NOx and particulates, compared to conventional switchers.