First solar powered train in scheduled service

The first solar-powered passenger train is the Byron Bay Solar Train, which runs along a 3-km (1.86-mi) stretch of the previously disused Murwillumbah railway line between North Belongil Beach and Byron Beach in Byron Bay, New South Wales, Australia. The train carried its first paying customers on 16 December 2017.

The train comprises a pair of 600-Class Railmotor carriages that were built by Sydney's Chullora Railway Workshops in 1949. The Byron Bay Railway Company acquired the set in 2014 and converted it over to fully electric operation. This meant removing one of the two original engines (the other was kept as an emergency backup) to make space for a 77-kW/h battery bank, putting in new electric motors and, most importantly, adding 6.5-kW of thin-film solar panels to the roof. The train is also fitted with a regenerative braking system that recovers some of the energy lost through braking.

In addition to the on-board solar panels, the station at the northern terminus of the route is fitted with a 30-kW conventional solar array, which can be used to top-up the train's batteries at the end of the day or when the skies are overcast. Most days, the train only uses about 35% of the power generated by the station array, meaning that the remaining 65% is sold back into the power grid.

The train runs nine 6-km (3.7-mi) round trips per day, typically making the journey at an average speed of 30–40 km/h (18–25 mph), though the train is capable of speeds of up to 70 km/h (43 mph). During the train's first year of service, it carried around 100,000 passengers and did not miss a single service.

Solar panels have been fitted to trains before, most notably in India, but these earlier installations were all focused on providing power for auxiliary systems (lights, information displays, etc.) not the actual drive mechanism.