Rarely seen by the general public, rail road excavators are a critical piece of the infrastructure puzzle – one that can travel directly on the tracks while digging, lifting, and clearing obstacles from the track, working on everything from track maintenance and renewal to utility and civil construction projects. This one’s electric.
Co-developed by Dutch equipment brand AMT and construction firm Royal BAM, the TW series of electric rail road excavators (available in 150, 160, and 180 sizes, representing 18-24 metric tonne classes) are all-electric machines packing a 600V electrical system managing a water-cooled, permanent-magnet electric motor putting out 121 kW (~160 hp).
The motor draws power from a set of four 90 kWh battery packs (360 kWh total) good for 8-16 hours of continuous operation. The interesting bit, though, is not only that the batteries are swappable to help the excavator keep on keepin’ on – they’re hot swappable, meaning it can keep working on two or three batteries while a second machine plucks one out and pops in another one, so the crew can keep riding the rails.
What’s more, the same modular 90 kWh battery packs can be shared across a number of AMT machines, which keeps energy from being stranded in idle assets and reduces the job’s total investment in batteries and machinery in the same way – and for the same reasons – that similar systems work for Craftsman, Milwaukee, and Ryobi guys.
Hot swap, won’t stop
The clever battery-swap trick doesn’t mean AMT treated charging as an afterthought, though. The excavator’s onboard charger can charge the batteries at up to 120 kW, which the company claims can bring the full 260 kW pack from a 20–80% SOC in under two hours – so you won’t need three or four machines to make the battery pack investment make sense.
You can check out some of the AMT electric rail excavator’s specs in the company’s online brochure, then let us know what you think of the machine’s hot-swap battery trick in the comments.
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