There are thousands of trains criss-crossing the country daily, most of them freight carrying with many times over a hundred cars between engines. All of those cargo cars have at least 4 axles and 8 wheels each. My thoughts are regarding the potential to use the solid axle of the train as the spinning part of a power generator. I am thinking of the way a generator is designed by having a spinning shaft inside a stator. So the idea is to turn the axle into the rotor and mounting a stator closely around the axle. Then when the axle is spinning it will generate power with little detriment to the engine's performance.
I have found a few things in my searches for any developments along this line but only found a single patent so far for an axle end design.
Railroad car with axle-mounted electrical generator
This would be mounted to the outside of the wheels where I would like to use the inside of the wheels and axle shafts.
It really seems like there is a gargantuan amount of potential power generation just going to waste as these trains roll the tracks. There is regenerative breaking on subway cars but they are stopping and going constantly which would give more credence to the braking generators working well in that situation. But when the freight trains are plugging along for hours in the middle of the plains states for instance, they should be producing power with some of the movement.
Why would this not work?
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