Solarpunk Travel

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Community for those focused on sustainable travel. Our society's current levels of energy intensive and frequent travel are not compatible with life on a finite planet. We advocate for long-term slow travel to see the world, and low energy local travel to deeply experience your community. Green washing free zone.

related to sustainable travel:

!trains@midwest.social ← open to all train chatter (but note the instance is centered on the midwest USA)
!rail@feddit.uk ← UK Rail and Trains
!ukpublictransport@feddit.uk ← UK public transport

related to travel generally:

!travel@eviltoast.org ← general travel
!main@lemmy.globe.pub ← general travel (this whole instance devoted to travel but note there is an instance-wide no politics rule there)
!traveltips@feddit.uk ← Europe focus

The communities listed above are decentralized. Centralized instances are omitted as they go against the fedi purpose and it’s better to cultivate digital rights in the free world. That means instances that have a disproportionately large population or are centralized on Cloudflare are not listed.

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bonkerfield

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The world's first solar powered train (youtu.be)

submitted 8 months ago by SteveKLord to c/solarpunktravel

4 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The Byron Bay Railroad Company runs the world's first 100% solar-powered train. It wouldn't work everywhere - but in the bright sunshine of Australia, it might just be the right tool for the job.

More about the railroad: https://byronbaytrain.com.au/

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[–] bonkerfield 2 points 6 months ago

Totally amazing and the very most solarpunk way of doing it imho. Especially that really beautiful classic train getting the retrofit.

[–] Jonnsy 1 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I didn't watch the video, but wouldn't it be even better between the rails.

[–] MrMakabar 2 points 8 months ago

No, the solar panels on the station roofs and on the train are easily enough to power the train.

[–] PuddleOfKittens@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

The rail area gets vibrated by the wheels (which would shorten the solar panel lifetimes directly), any dust that the vibrations kick up would settle on the panel and reduce its efficiency, and anything dangling underneath the train would absolutely destroy the panels.

Besides, if you have the solar panels on the train track then it still needs to be wired to the train, which means you need an overhead wire and you might as well just put the panels next to the train track, where it's quieter and less vibrated.