In his Informed Sources column in the August 2021 Edition of Modern Railways, Roger Ford has a section with the same sub-title as this post. He discusses what is to happen to the Class 22x fleets of 125 mph diesel trains and then says this about Project Thor, which was an idea of a few years back.
I still believe the addition of a pantograph transformer car to convert a ‘22x’ to a bi-mode has even more potential than the first time round. Routes operated by the CrossCountry ‘22x’ should be early candidates for electrification, and bi-modes are a simple way of boosting the benefits of electrification.
Roger Ford, in his Informed Sources column in August 2021 Modern Railways
Project Thor is described in a section in the Wikipedia entry for the Voyager train, which is entitled Proposed Conversion To Electrical Operation. This is said.
In 2010 Bombardier proposed the conversion of several Voyager multiple units into hybrid electric and diesel vehicles capable of taking power from an overhead pantograph (electro-diesels EDMUs). The proposal was named Project Thor.
It appears that, one of the reasons the project foundered was that Bombardier had no capability to make steel carriages in the UK.
In the July 2018 Edition of Modern Railways, there is an article entitled Bi-Mode Aventra Details Revealed. A lot of the article takes the form of reporting an interview with Des McKeon, who is Bombardier’s Commercial |Director and Global Head of Regional and Intercity.
He also confirmed Bombardier is examining the option of fitting batteries to Voyager DEMUs for use in stations.
In the three years since that brief sentence, technology has moved on. Perhaps most significantly, Hitachi have launched the Hitachi Intercity Tri-Mode Battery Train, which is described in this Hitachi infographic.
