Transportation/Rail

Rail Car Power Solutions

Dufrane manufactures custom transformers and custom coils as power solutions for the Rail Car Industry and has for over 30 years.

Hi Integrity Custom Transformers for Rail Cars are special

Electric Railcar equipment has to hold up to extended operation cycles, weather extremes, high humidity, and extensive vibration and temperature conditions. For key components inside the train, premature failure means heightened maintenance costs, downtime, and potentially costly damage to trains and/or cargo. Meanwhile, the reliability of critical components like handbrakes can have life or death implications for railroad personnel and passengers.

What types of products do we make for Rail Cars?

Dufrane makes hundreds of components for Transit cars manufactured by industry leaders such as Bombardier and Alstom.  These custom transformers include chokes, reactors, inductors, current transformers, power transformers and other custom windings and coils.

Transit cars include both the passenger cars used for long-distance rail service (such as those employed by AMTRAK) and cars for light rail and subway systems, and smaller rail networks such as those found at many large international airports. Safety concerns necessitate including much more sophisticated onboard systems. On passenger cars, for example, mechanical couplers are replaced with electro-mechanical systems featuring multiple fail-safes.

Door controls and slides need to be more reliable, ensuring passengers can quickly board and deboard.

Custom Transformers by Dufrane for the rail car industry are typically made of the most reliable materials, designed to be resistant to persistent vibration and environmental conditions and are inevitably subject to special processes including VPI and epoxy encapsulating to protect these important circuits.