The Mooresville Hydrail Initiative, begun in August, 2003, as an invited  proposal to the US DOT’s Volpe “think tank”, reached its primary goal this morning (17 September 2018) as the first ticketed passengers rode Alstom’s ghostly quiet Coradia iLint trains through Lower Saxony—the world’s first regular intercity hydrail passenger traffic!

Stan Thompson (pictured above), the first person outside Germany or Japan to propose Hydrail, was onboard as a guest of the Canadian fuel cell vendor, Hydrogenics Inc. who, with Alstom, brought Intercity Hydrail to market. (Intra-urban hydrail trams exist in China and elsewhere.)

Stan did not, he assures me, really get to drive the train or even toot its particularly melodic horn.

More info in German including video: https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/niedersachsen/oldenburg_ostfriesland/Brennstoffzellenzug-Premiere-mit-hohen-Erwartungen,brennstoffzellenzug124.html