RUSSIAN Railways (RZD) plans to operate up to five freight trains in virtual coupling mode next year. RZD deputy managing director and head of traction directorate, Mr Oleg Valinsky, confirmed on August 26 that these plans would include driving locomotives using the virtual technology with up to five consecutive trains. Up to five freight trains could operate in virtual coupling mode next year.
Virtual coupling, or ‘platooning’, allows a railway to better regulate the interval between trains. It can reduce the gap between following trains from 12 minutes to 6-8 minutes. Virtual coupling works by exchanging information on the mode of movement between the locomotive powering the leading train and those on the ‘slave trains’ via a digital radio channel.
OK, it’s completely off-topic, but it does vaguely remind me of something I seem to recall: that one of the Soviet Union’s most significant responses to Operation Barbarossa in 1941 was to transfer large portions of the Red Army en masse along the Trans-Siberian Railway in nose-to-tail trains with complete disregard to safe operational practice. (Stalin having for once believed one of his own spies who advised that Japan was not about to attack in the East.)
Are these like drones? Only the lead unit has a driver and the slaves following are automated on a cleared road.