PAPERS |
Satoru HATSUKADE, Minoru NAGATA
Every freight train operated at heavy-snow regions is equipped with portable taillights (lanterns) instead of red reflecting disks. The lanterns are merely durable for 30-hours with alkaline rechargeable batteries because the lanterns are of built-in of heaters for thawing. For long-distance trains, it is unavoidable to replace discharged lanterns with full-charged ones. We developed a new-portable lantern with high-capacity Li-ion batteries to alleviate such workloads. The batteries are durable at least three times longer than a current lantern even under a temperature of -20oC. In addition, the weight of the batteries is lighter and maintenance. In this paper, we describe the details of the lantern with the results of performance tests.
Copyright (c) 2006 Railway Technical Research Institute