Mr. Thompson has spoken on hydrail in Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Türkiye.
MOORESVILLE, NC, July 19, 2023 /24-7PressRelease/ -- For thirty-three years, Mr. Thompson was a planner and futurist with the Bell System, retiring in 1996. His work at Bell with US government colleagues to mitigate emissions and reduce infrastructure demand led to his creation in retirement of the Mooresville Hydrail Initiative.
Mr. Thompson coined the term hydrail in an August 21, 2003, presentation to the US Departments of Defense and Transportation. Their planned fuel cell switch locomotive technology could be applied to civilian transit, hopefully beginning on the proposed Mooresville-Charlotte line. He coined hydrail, a contraction of hydrogen and rail, as a search engine target so pioneers could easily collaborate world-wide.
In 2005, in Charlotte, Mooresville convened the First International Hydrail Conference. It was sponsored by employees at Bank of America; NC's State Energy Office; the Charlotte and Mooresville Chambers of Commerce and the Centralina Council of Governments. Later conferences were hosted by universities in Denmark, Spain, Türkiye (UN funded) and the UK.
In 2013, Toronto hosted the conference. The keynote address by Hydrogenics CEO, Daryl Wilson, won train builder Alstom Transport to the hydrail future. In two years, the first fleet of 40 Coradia iLint hydrail trains was sold to Germany. The first hydrail line opened in Lower Saxony in 2018.
European diesels may all be replaced with hydrail by around 2035. China, India, South Korea, and Japan have begun the shift. China and Canada recently introduced hydrail switching and freight locomotives. India plans passenger hydrail.
Eliminating overhead power wires cuts about $10M per mile from track electrification and over $100K per-mile-per-year from maintenance.
Mr. Thompson has spoken on hydrail in Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Türkiye. Germany's Schleswig-Holstein State Parliament applauded his September 21, 2016, visit for helping to introduce hydrail in Northern Germany. On March 26, 2019, he was honored by the US DOE and DOT at their H2@Rail(sm) workshop.
Mr. Thompson has written 240 columns on history and economics in local newspapers. The word hydrail first appeared in his "The Mooresville Hydrail Initiative"—a February 17, 2004, article in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy.
Besides hydrail, Mr. Thompson organized the "Sci-Tech" section in the Charlotte Observer and Raleigh News and Observer. Sci-Tech was honored in the March 11, 2010, issue of the Columbia Journalism Review.
While at Bell, Mr. Thompson served on the Charlotte Clean City Committee and the Atlanta Clean City Commission. He received awards for distinguished service from Atlanta Mayors Maynard Jackson and Andrew Young. His Navigation Numbers project in Charlotte changed conflicting laws so street address numbers are high and large enough to be seen by drivers and emergency responders, easing traffic. His "One Lake One Day" project will eventually mean a higher bridge will give larger vessels access to all 522 miles of Lake Norman NC's shoreline.
Mr. Thompson has a 1962 BA in English literature from Pfeiffer College. In 2022, he was made a Life Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, where he has contributed to hydrail articles in IEEE Spectrum.
Mr. Thompson has been featured in broadcasts on Charlotte's WBTV, WSOC-TV and WFAE news "Charlotte Talks." He's mentioned in Forbes online "Will Biden Bring Back Hydrail?" He has been on UNC TV's "North Carolina Now" and was featured in a front-page hydrail story in The Charlotte Observer on July 1, 2006.
Mr. Thompson is a member of the Mooresville South Iredell Chamber of Commerce, the Mooresville Morning Rotary Club, the World Affairs Council of Charlotte, the Charlotte Economics Club, and the American Council on Germany.
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