In brief: Intramotev will put its driverless railcars on a city-owned Missouri short line, backed by a $16.2 million federal grant.
Implications:
Service: Intramotev pitches its self-moving railcars as a way for short lines to serve your siding every day instead of a few days a week.
Rules: Intramotev’s Missouri test is built to give regulators and other short lines a safety record to copy, including at public road crossings.
The News
Intramotev, a St. Louis company that builds autonomous freight railcars, will run its TugVolt cars on a Missouri short line, paid for by a $16.2 million federal grant, the company said in a release. The Federal Railroad Administration picked the City of Columbia for the grant last week under its Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) program, with Intramotev as the technology partner.
Intramotev will build two TugVolts at its St. Louis plant and run them on the Columbia Terminal Railroad (COLT), a 21.4-mile line between Centralia and Columbia that the city owns and Columbia City Utilities operates. COLT connects to Norfolk Southern at Centralia. The company will move in phases under an FRA-approved test program, starting with remote switching at COLT’s Columbia terminal and building to autonomous freight service over the full line and its 57 public road crossings.
“Autonomous railcars can help them serve more customers, more often, at lower cost, and this program will show what that looks like on a working mainline,” Intramotev CEO Tim Luchini said of short lines in the release.
The whole project costs $20.8 million, with the city and private partners covering $4.6 million. Besides the railcar test, the money pays for 36,000 composite rail ties, track tamping, three new switches and two charging units.
Why It Matters
Columbia moves Intramotev’s cars from private track onto a public short line that hands freight to the national rail network.
Private track so far: Its best-known deployment runs on Carmeuse’s own route at a Michigan limestone mine, which has grade crossings but sits off the national network.
A public line next: COLT hauls freight for local businesses and interchanges with Norfolk Southern, so the test runs where real shippers’ cars move.
A template: Intramotev says the project will produce a safety record that FRA and the more than 600 US short lines can use. Rep. Mark Alford’s office called it the first documented demonstration of its kind on a regulated US short line.
Zoom In
The car: A TugVolt is a battery-electric railcar that drives itself and can pull unpowered cars. At Carmeuse’s mine in Cedarville, Michigan, six-car trains run with three TugVolts and three unpowered cars for 16 hours a day, then recharge for the other eight.
The control: Carmeuse calls its setup “supervised autonomy,” with operators directing the cars from a loader, a pickup or a tablet, Katie Kloentrup, a senior digital engineer at Carmeuse Americas, told a shipper meeting in January.
The pitch: At the same meeting, Intramotev COO Alex Peiffer said a TugVolt could let a railroad offer “service every single day” instead of two or three days a week, which is the case for winning freight back from trucks.
Who’s Exposed
Shippers on short lines: Plants, elevators and warehouses on a short line are the market Intramotev is chasing. If the model works, they are the ones who could see more frequent switching without the railroad adding crews.
Transload operators: Terminals that switch cars all day are an early fit, which is why Watco’s Wood River, Illinois, site is on Intramotev’s list.
Short line owners: Cities and holding companies weighing Intramotev’s cars will watch Columbia’s safety record before they commit.
Peer Insights
Two operators already working with Intramotev.
Carmeuse Americas: Runs Intramotev’s TugVolts at its Michigan limestone mine and was on pace to move 1 million tons a year with them, as of January.
Watco: Signed an agreement with Intramotev for its Wood River, Illinois, transload terminal.
Intramotev isn’t the only one taking drivers out of freight. Parallel Systems raised $100 million for its own driverless electric rail cars, and on the road, Kodiak launched autonomous freight runs on the Dallas-Laredo lane.
Pushback
Not everyone buys the truck-to-rail pitch. Janet Drysdale, chief commercial officer of Canadian National, told the same January shipper meeting that in her 30 years in rail, “truck-to-rail conversion has been the most overpromised, underdelivered opportunity.” The Columbia test will show whether the cars run safely on a public line, not whether shippers move freight off trucks.
What’s Next
First: remote switching at COLT’s Columbia terminal.
Then: autonomous freight service across the 21.4-mile line and its 57 public crossings.
Build: Intramotev makes both cars at its St. Louis plant. Neither the company nor the city has given dates.
