RAILWAY AGE DECEMBER 2024 ISSUE: After successfully deploying a prototype in Alberta, CPKC is testing its newest hydrogen-powered locomotive on heavy line haul coal trains in the mountains of British Columbia.
For more than a century, the mountains of British Columbia have been the Canadian Pacific Railway’s testing ground. During the first half of the 20th century, it wasn’t unusual for the railroad to send its largest and most powerful steam locomotives west to the Rocky and Selkirk mountains to see what these machines could do. The practice continued into the diesel era, particularly on coal trains that originated out of the mountains that surround Sparwood, B.C., beginning with Montreal Locomotive Works M-630s, then GMD (Diesel Division of General Motors of Canada, Ltd.) SD40-2s, and finally General Electric AC4400CWs
This year, that tradition continues as Canadian Pacific successor Canadian Pacific Kansas City (CPKC) tests an entirely new type of main line locomotive—powered by hydrogen. It’s a technology that railroad officials believe could change the entire industry, dramatically reducing emissions and moving it away from burning fossil fuels.
CPKC President and CEO Keith Creel has called the technology “transformational” and has said that if a hydrogen locomotive can work in heavy-haul service in the rugged mountains of western Canada, “it will work anywhere.”
The person behind CPKC’s groundbreaking hydrogen locomotive program is Assistant Vice President Operations Technology Kyle Mulligan. A few years ago, Mulligan’s now-retired boss, Senior Vice President Operations Scott MacDonald, was challenged by investors about what the railroad was doing to move away from burning diesel fuel. MacDonald didn’t have a quick answer and brought the question to his team. Mulligan, who has worked in operations in the past and understood the challenges of running trains in rugged territory in the dead of winter, knew that a battery-powered locomotive wouldn’t work for CPKC, even though some in the industry are exploring that as an option.
“In cold weather, battery-powered locomotives would have significant challenges,” Mulligan said. “And from the perspective of Precision Scheduled Railroading, having battery-powered locomotives that need to charge for 14-plus hours and having to duplicate or even triplicate the number of locomotives we need does not fit our model of optimizing assets.”
After giving it some thought, Mulligan said he believed a hydrogen-powered locomotive was the answer. While hydrogen is powering some transit vehicles and small switching locomotives (BNSF had commissioned a hydrogen-powered switcher a decade ago), no one had ever applied the technology to a main line locomotive. Mulligan brought the idea to the railroad’s top executives, and Creel said they could try to build one.
Starting with a 35-year-old SD40-2F, Mulligan and his team removed the diesel engine, alternator, cooling system and just about anything else on the frame from the rear of the cab back. Fuel cells were then installed where the diesel engine was once located. The area that was the fuel tank was replaced with batteries used to capture energy from regenerative braking when going downhill, especially in mountainous territory. Mulligan said the batteries also help balance the amount of power that is going to the traction motors; sometimes the traction motors are being powered entirely by the fuel cells, sometimes by the batteries and sometimes it’s a blend of the two. That mix is determined by an onboard power manager. From the perspective of the locomotive operator though, there’s little difference between the hydrogen locomotive and the diesel-electric.
“We want to make the experience for the locomotive engineer to be as seamless as possible because we don’t want to have to retrain people on these locomotives,” Mulligan said.
In late 2021, the first hydrogen unit, locomotive 1001, moved under its own power for the first time. Less than a year later, it entered revenue service in the Calgary area. Since then, two additional hydrogen locomotives have been built: a four-axle switcher built from a GP38-2 and a six-axle AC high-horsepower unit built from an AC4400CW.
Most hydrogen comes from natural gas production (usually called gray hydrogen), but it can also come from clean sources (green hydrogen), including electrolyzers that separate hydrogen from water by using electricity. Early during the hydrogen locomotive program, CPKC partnered with ATCO EnPower™, a division of Canadian Utilities Ltd., for construction of two hydrogen production and refueling facilities, one each in Calgary and Edmonton. ATCO EnPower provided engineering, procurement and construction services and has signed an agreement to operate these facilities. Each includes a 1-megawatt (MW) electrolyzer, compression, storage and dispensing systems for locomotive refueling. While the electrolyzer in Edmonton uses off-the-grid power (and therefore isn’t “clean”), the one in Calgary is powered by a 5-MW solar farm on the CPKC campus, meaning freight operations there are being supported by green energy. Mulligan said they hope to eventually have all the hydrogen locomotives supported with green energy, but until the railroad proves there is a demand it will continue to use hydrogen from a mix of sources.
“Oil and gas producers who can produce low-carbon hydrogen are only going to do it at a rate that supports demand,” Mulligan said. “It’s a lot like the movie Field of Dreams: If you don’t build the baseball field, the players are not going to come. At CPKC, we were cognizant of that, so we knew we had to show that the locomotive could work, and that it was rugged and reliable. So, it doesn’t matter for now if we’re using gray, green or blue hydrogen. We’re just showing that it is possible.”
Besides hydrogen fueling facilities in Edmonton and Calgary, the railroad is also building ones in Lethbridge, Alta., and Golden, B.C. The railroad has worked with a vendor to develop a mobile refueler with liquid hydrogen that can evaporite, compress and dispense hydrogen gas into the locomotives. That allows the hydrogen locomotives to essentially be fueled like any other locomotive in the CPKC fleet. The railroad is also establishing on-site storage.
The new fueling facility at Golden will help support the railroad’s first main line deployment of the new locomotives. In 2023, CPKC and Teck Coal (now Glencore’s Elk Valley Resources) announced a collaboration to use the hydrogen locomotives on metallurgical coal trains from mines near Sparwood, B.C., to ports on the West Coast. In September 2024, CPKC used hydrogen locomotive 1200 in concert with traditional diesel-electric locomotives to lead a coal train from Sparwood to Golden, before returning with empties. The 1200 is the railroad’s largest and most powerful hydrogen locomotive, featuring 12 fuel cells and a liquid-cooled AC traction system (vs. the normal air-cooled systems on other locomotives) developed by CPKC and its contractors. The hydrogen fueling system, housed in a tender developed by HGmotive™, allows for additional space on the locomotive for fuel cells, power electronics and cooling system components.
Mulligan said the original plan for the initial test between Sparwood and Golden was to have locomotive 1200 be used as supplemental power on the run. But an issue with one of the diesel locomotives on the consist (coal trains out of Sparwood usually operate with Distributed Power—one head end locomotive, one in the middle and a third on the rear) meant that 1200 was running the entire time. A follow-up test a few weeks later was equally successful, and so far the locomotive has not suffered any in-service failures.
The 1200, matched with its fuel tender, can make one round trip from the mines to Golden and back (about 450 miles) without refueling.
Beginning in January, CPKC plans to make 32 test runs on coal trains out of Sparwood, initially to Golden but eventually all the way to the West Coast. Mulligan said the railroad has decided to conduct the tests in stages for several reasons. For one, they want to better understand how the hydrogen locomotives will operate in the tunnels west of Golden, most notably the 9.1-mile-long Mount Macdonald Tunnel on Rogers Pass. The railroad will also have to coordinate with CN in the Thompson and Fraser River canyons where the two Class I’s directionally operate (“co-production”) on each other’s tracks. Mulligan said the hope is to eventually have a coal train powered entirely with hydrogen locomotives by the end of 2027. The next high-horsepower unit is anticipated to be completed sometime in 2025.
The railroad is also looking at deploying additional hydrogen units in Edmonton, Calgary and Lethbridge. Presently, locomotives 1001 and 1002 operate twice a week out of CPKC’s Ogden Yard to serve local industries. Mulligan said the limited service is primarily due to a lack of trained manpower to maintain them (presently the locomotives are cared for by the railroad’s technology team). However, the railroad hopes to hand off maintenance of the locomotives to the mechanical department sometime in 2025. Before that can happen, mechanical crews will need to be trained on how to service the locomotives and how to work safely around them, or more specifically, how to work safely around hydrogen and batteries.
High concentrations of hydrogen can ignite. Because of that, the locomotives are heavily ventilated to allow for hydrogen to escape. They’re also outfitted with gas detectors and infrared cameras to detect leaks. If a leak is detected, pressure valves will close, and the flow of hydrogen will be cut off.
While a hydrogen ignition would be quick, a battery fire (caused by something called thermal runaway) could act much more like a traditional diesel fire and spread throughout a locomotive. To prevent that, the locomotive’s batteries are sitting in half-inch reinforced steel battery packs meant to contain any fire. The battery packs (located where the fuel tank would be located on a traditional locomotive) have also been reinforced to handle sideswipes and vehicle collisions.
Once mechanical crews are more familiar with the hydrogen locomotives, the hope is to put more in regular service. One of the first places will be Lethbridge, which predominantly uses GMD SD40-2s in local service. Mulligan said CPKC plans to assign two six-axle DC road switchers to Lethbridge sometime in 2025 (the railroad plans on building at least seven new hydrogen units next year).
By the end of next year, CPKC also hopes to have four fueling stations fully operating and able to support 80 locomotives. Eventually, the hope is to have the hydrogen locomotives operate outside of western Canada, including in the U.S. A key part of that expansion will be a partnership with CSX, which has committed to building 20 hydrogen locomotives (10 for CPKC and 10 for CSX) by 2026 at its Huntington, W.Va., locomotive shops. Presently, a four-axle hydrogen unit (built from a GP38) is being used as a shop switcher.
“This technology is still new, and we’re still testing it, as is our partner CPKC, to determine how reliable it is and how it compares to our current diesel locomotives,” said CSX spokesperson Austin Staton. “A lot will be determined by how the hydrogen hubs get developed (in) the U.S. as availability of the fuel is crucial for us.”
Mulligan said as testing continues in the mountains of British Columbia, CPKC is proving that hydrogen could be the fuel of the future within the railroad industry. “We’re not in the rendering phase,” he noted. “These are locomotives that people can look at, see, touch, feel and ride in. They have switched freight, they have been on the main line, and they are in revenue service. We want to demonstrate to the industry that this is possible.”
NEW DEVELOPMENT: CPKC on Dec. 6 signed a new Long Term Supply Agreement (LTSA) with Ballard Power Systems for initial supply of 98 HFC (hydrogen fuel cell) engines for the North American freight rail market. With each engine rated at 200 kW (kilowatts), total output for all 98 is approximately 20 mW (megawatts) of fuel cell power. Deliveries of all units are expected in 2025.
“The LTSA builds on an existing partnership between Ballard and CPKC that started in 2021, and has included delivery of approximately 10 mW of fuel cell engines to date and the successful integration of Ballard fuel cell engines into hydrogen-powered locomotives for regular switching and freight service applications in Alberta, Canada,” Ballard noted. “The fuel cell engines purchased from Ballard will support the expansion of CPKC’s hydrogen locomotive program.
“We are thrilled with the opportunity to further develop our strategic relationship with CPKC to decarbonize not only their locomotive fleet but also participate in the electrification of freight rail across North America,” said Randy MacEwen, President and CEO of Ballard Power. “This order represents a step forward in CPKC’s decarbonization vision and confidence in hydrogen fuel cells as a potential long-term replacement of diesel engines, providing the environmental benefits along with long range, fast refueling, heavy payloads and cold weather operation.”
