Unless you have access to Dr. Who’s TARDIS or H. G. Wells’ Time Machine, you’ll have to depend on old texts to envision William Murdoch’s 1784 steam locomotive debut in Britain or Peter Cooper’s Tom Thumb, the first locomotive to run in America.

But if you can afford an air ticket to Asturias, the colorful northern Spanish principality on the Bay of Biscayne, you’ll be able to buy a ticket and ride on the world’s first hydrail train and experience rail history up-close and personal. If I can scrape up the cost of the trip, that’s an experience I wouldn’t miss.

A Taiwan science museum was the first to ride people regularly on fuel cell rail equipment. Japan built and tested two different hydrail trains late in the last decade, though neither was placed in revenue service. That’s a shame; they would have come in handy when the tragic tsunami interrupted grid power and brownouts occasionally stopped trains far inland.

Last November China “successfully launched” a “new energy fuel cell light-rail train” but the English language People’s Daily Online release makes no mention of plans for putting hydrail into revenue service.

But the Spanish meter-gauge train built by FEVE, the national narrow-gauge rail operator that I wrote about on October 10, 2011, will be selling fares to the general public and I hope to be waiting at the head of the ticket window line on Day One.

The last I heard, Day One had not yet been announced. But, given the wide coverage (in Spanish) on the Internet and the RTV España television coverage online, I’ll bet there are enough hydrogen economy disciples in the world to keep FEVE’s Series 3400 tranvía de hidrogeno booked-up with tourists for weeks before the queues get short enough for locals to try out their own historic innovation.

The TV URL is http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/panorama-regional/panorama-regional-23-09-11/1205440/

The hydrolley segment is about seven minutes into the program, with a short teaser at the beginning.

My prediction: the hydrogen train in Spain will usher in a whole new trend in tourism as we hydrailfans begin flocking to such openings wherever they occur around the world.

It’s way too easy to miss really important events in the history of hydrogen railroading if they don’t contain the magic searchable word “hydrail”. I missed a huge one last month: the demonstration of Europe’s (and perhaps the world’s) first hydrail train—or maybe the first hydrolley—now planned for regular passenger service in 2012.

The honors go to FEVE—“Ferrocarriles Españoles de Via Estrecha” (“Spanish Narrow-Gauge Railways” in English)—and a primary design contractor, CIDAUT—“Centro para la Investigación y Desarrollo en Transporte y Energía” (Center for Research and Development in Transportation and Energy).

On the 23 of September, 2011, FEVE issued a press release describing an event which, if it wasn’t as flashy as the famous driving of the Golden Spike marking the completion of the Union Pacific, was at least the European Green Spike equivalent.

That was the day when the FEVE’s President, Sr. Ángel Villarba, and Sr. Antonio de Luis Solar, Mayor of Pravia, Asturias, waited with several members of the FEVE and CIDAUT project team at the Pravia Station for the arrival of a hydrail-converted, Series 3400 railcar  on its narrow-gauge (one meter) track.

The H2 Series 3400 railcar (or tram or “tranvía”) is designed for the hilly terrain of the Principality of Asturias—Northern Spain’s ancient Kingdom of Asturias, back in the Middle Ages.

Its four traction motors are powered by lithium ion batteries, topped-up by two 12 kilowatt hydrogen fuel cells fed by a rack of twelve hydrogen tanks.

Stopping energy is recovered in the batteries via regenerative braking and reacceleration is boosted by supercapacitors, also charged during braking.

Although Taiwan’s hydrail museum train was the first by several years to haul passengers around its grounds on a regular basis, FEVE’s narrow-gauge line in Spain will be the world’s first to sell tickets on a real live hydrail passenger line.

CIDAUT’s Alberto Montes, a key member of the design team, tipped me off about FEVE’s September press release (in Spanish):

http://www.feve.es/es/sala-de-prensa/feve-informa/feve-presenta-el-tranvia-de-hidrogeno-que-entrara-en-circulacion-en-2012.html?texto=&idCategoria=0&fechaDesde=&fechaHasta

Sr. Montes has been invited to tell the story of the H2 3400 railcar conversion at the Seventh International Hydrail Conference, hosted by the Birmingham [UK] Centre for Railway Research and Education at the University of Birmingham on June 26 and 27, 2012.

As an update, Eco-Trek has made its way through Europe, traveling 2,300 miles with zero emissions and has now landed on the U. S. shores. The first destination is Miami.

This week’s episode features an eco-friendly fashion designer, a green parking garage and an underwater cemetery (and no, this isn’t the mobster kind of “feed ‘em to the fishes” kind of cemetery).

The next stop for the Mercedes B-Class F-Cell will be New Orleans where Eco-Trek will feature how some of the city is rebuilding its neighborhoods in a green and environmentally-friendly manner. Maybe they’ll even check on those little pink houses that Brad Pitt built after Hurricane Katrina struck, which were in fact very green at heart.

Anyway, if you want to keep up-to-date on the Eco-Trek here’s the Youtube Channel where you can watch the episodes.

I started this blog on April 5, 2006 about a year after I had started the main website. Before starting the blog I had looked around to see what the other hydrogen car bloggers were doing in order to get a feel for what direction I would go with this blog.

At that time, I didn’t find one person talking about hydrogen cars in a blog on a consistent basis. So, here we are, several years and 1,000 posts later and there is now just a very short list of hydrogen car bloggers.

So, anyway, thanks for reading this blog and for visiting the hydrogen fuel cars website and hydrogen cars forum and message board and we’ll celebrate again when I get to 2,000 posts.

NIST has opened the largest test facility to study the smallest atom, hydrogen, which has only one electron and one proton, making it susceptible to leakage plus metal and alloy embrittlement.

Sure, this isn’t a sexy topic like hydrogen race cars or new technology for fuel cell vehicles. This is more of the nuts and bolts work of figuring out the transporting and delivering of hydrogen which is necessary in order to build out a suitable refueling infrastructure.

According to NIST, “Because hydrogen can penetrate and embrittle some metals and alloys, developing standards for using existing pipelines, storage tanks, pumps and delivery systems is an essential first step before the elemental gas can be considered as a viable fuel for widespread use.

The test chamber (pictured) is one of the largest in the country and will expose different parts to pressurized hydrogen gas. The scientists will gather data on the structural stresses of the components with the ultimate goal of making hydrogen delivery as safe as possible.

General Motors has its Project Driveway to consider, Ford has been developing both ICE and fuel cell vehicles and even after the split from Daimler, Chrysler earlier this past year unveiled its ecoVoyager concept fuel cell vehicle.

So, here are a couple of reasons that one or more of these automakers may just scale back their hydrogen vehicle programs. First, hybrid electric vehicles (HEV’s) electric vehicles (EV’s) and plug-in electric vehicles (PHEV’s) seem to be in favor now.

To make their pitch in Washington DC, the Big 3 CEO’s ditched their corporate jets this time around, in favor of a Detroit-based road trip in their companies’ respective hybrid vehicles. Ford CEO Alan Mulally drove an Escape Hybrid SUV, GM CEO Rick Wagoner drove a Chevy Malibu Hybrid to start then switched over to a Volt PHEV test car for the final leg and Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli pulled up in an Aspen Hybrid SUV that is being discontinued shortly.

A week ago, I talked about how President-Elect Barack Obama seems to favor EV’s and PHEV’s saying that he wants government vehicles to lead the way with this technology. A second reason that one or more of the Big 3 automakers may scale back in hydrogen vehicle development right now is to put more resources into the making of HEV’s, EV’s and PHEV’s as a short-term solution.

They won’t have to worry about the building of a hydrogen infrastructure as part of their plans to stay solvent. They will only have to worry about the things they can control, such as making the batteries work properly and designing cars that people want to buy.

Now, the one reason each automaker may not scale back its hydrogen program is because first the money allocated will not make or break the company at this point. Second, it makes good business sense to keep working on the projects that will help make the company solvent and competitive in the future.

But, because it’s hard to know what people will do in a crisis, we’ll have to wait and see just how the hydrogen R&D parts of the Big 3 automakers weathers this storm.

The Energy Independence and Security Act is made up of two parts including the H-Prize Act and the Bright Energy Savings Act. The Bright Energy Savings Act requires the Federal Government’s office buildings to replace standard light bulbs with energy efficient CFL bulbs, for an energy savings of 75-percent.

The overall energy independence act will also raise CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards for automobiles from today’s 27.5 mpg for cars and 22.5 mpg for light trucks (and SUVs) to 35 mpg for both by 2020. This action is expected to save the average family between $700 and $1,000 per year in fuel costs.

The H-Prize Act offers $50 million in incentives to companies for innovation in hydrogen technology for the transportation sector. Multi-million dollar awards will be given for companies that create transformational changes in hydrogen production, storage, distribution and utilization technologies.

The H-Prize Act is modeled after incentives offered by the X-Prize Foundation, that have already paid $10 million for innovations in the space tourism industry. The same foundation is also offering an Automotive X-Prize for breakthrough technology that will radically reduce oil consumption in the transportation sector.

With all of this prize money up for grabs, expect to see increased interest, innovation and participation in the hydrogen transportation sector like at no other time in history. If we can put a man on the moon in a few short years of a nationally concerted effort, there is no doubt that we can put a hydrogen car in every garage as well.

What this is basically is a way to test the dispensing of hydrogen and the performance of fuel cell vehicles in cold weather. Hyundai will provide five Tucson FCEV fuel cell hybrids for the program. Chevron will provide the fueling station that uses steam reformation of methane to produce hydrogen and is able to refuel up to 10 vehicles per day.

The Army and National Guard will use the vehicles on a daily basis for mission related purposes. This is part of an ongoing interest by the Army to develop alternative energy resources to lessen the military’s dependence upon foreign fossil fuels, seen as a security issue that urgently needs to be addressed.

Researchers at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the United Kingdom have come up with a paper battery that they think will one day power a car. This paper battery stores energy like any other battery and yet can provide bursts of power like a capacitor.

Carbon nanotubes embedded into the paper and soaked with ionic electrolytes provide the power. While many manufacturers are playing rock, paper, scissors to come up with the most viable alternative, at the Polytechnic Institute paper covers rock as the most likely battery of the future.

Like many, Mr. Nusca says he hadn’t heard much about hydrogen cars since the 2003 State of the Union Address when President Bush addressed this issue. This post so far has elicited over 40 responses including my own.

The point of the post (I think) is how the mainstream media has forgotten about hydrogen cars as many top magazines, newspapers and other media outlets have simply turned their attention to other matters. In the last State of the Union Address, President Bush had dropped hydrogen cars from his speech in favor of ethanol.

Since people aren’t gung ho for a big change when it comes to their cars (and hydrogen would mean a Big Change), the mainstream media attention has simply turned to other matters of more immediate importance such as mine and bridge collapses and the war on terror.

But, this is even a bigger reason, for outlets like me to get the word out about hydrogen cars. If the large mainstream media isn’t going to do it, then it must be done from the grass roots level. Then again grass roots and green cars do make a pretty good pairing. The same goes for hot air and hydrogen and sometimes I have a lot of hot air in me to talk about hydrogen.