>>885461>Railroads do not care about quiet nor clean.Yes, but the cities they service do. For example, over a century ago NYC required all trains inside the city to be electric because they didn't want to deal with steam engine soot. Yes, RRs don't give a single shit about emissions but the cities they have to operate in do. This can be a significant problem if, say, a city like Portland or Oakland or LA decides to be really shitty about pollution. All three of these cities have large amounts of control, as they house the ports that the RRs make money from.
>Not practical at all. It really isn't. It is though. Assuming one were to pay the capital cost of building the catenary in the first place. Right now, the metrics for this obviously do not work out as the price of oil is so low. However, if there was suddenly a massive spike in the cost of oil, or if it were to become artificially scarce (say, due to federal restrictions on fracking or oil imports) then it would be the only option for RRs, both regular ones and short lines.
>But at that point they'll probably just be using natural gas.No, on the basis that converting an engine to NG costs much more money than converting a diesel engine to ethanol. The latter can be done much more cheaply than the former.
Again, my point is not that the RRs *should* electrify, my point is that electric locos offer greater efficiency than diesel-electric ones. However, they are also more expensive due to the catenary construction cost.
