Weeks after the California Air Resources Board approved an ambitious rule to limit rail pollution, the Pacific Harbor Line on Thursday, May 4, unveiled one of the nation’s most advanced zero-emission locomotives — which will be tested for the next year on short-haul routes in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
The new zero-emission, zero-idle EMD Joule battery electric locomotive, a product of Caterpillar subsidiary Progress Rail, will serve Pacific Harbor Line’s cargo short-haul service between ships and terminals, joining low-emissions diesel locomotives also serving in the ports.
Thursday’s event at a rail yard in Wilmington also marked the graduation of eight locomotive engineers.
The featured speaker, Federal Railroad Administrator Amit Bose, pledged that the federal government would continue to provide support to both ports as they push forward to become zero-emissions operations.
“To have the best rail service and ports in the world,” he said, “we need to invest in both modern infrastructure and the workers who keep operations moving.”
Trains have long been an important part of California’s legacy.
It is, after all, where the tracks for what became the first transcontinental rail service were connected in 1869, Bose said, turning the state from an isolated agrarian outpost to the economic hub it is now.
When Otis Cliatt, president of Pacific Harbor Line, took the stage, he pointed out that there was no sound coming from the green-and-white locomotive behind him.
“This locomotive right now is actually operating,” he said as the crowd applauded. “It’s on.”
The newest class of locomotives will join PHL’s short line service in the ports.
PHL likes to say “we make Christmas happen,” Cliatt said, referring to the major impacts rail has on getting cargo from the ports to every state across the nation, including during the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company, he said, is also “referred to as the…
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