WIRE THE HIGH-DENSITY FREIGHT CORRIDORS?

The Association of American Railroads went on record as opposing electrification of the freight railroads.  Perhaps that was a pre-emptive strike to keep the incoming administration's green initiatives away from at least one successful business.  That might be one way rent-seeking gets in the way of good ideas.  Railway Age contributing editor Jim Blaze suggests that electrification of some freight lines makes economic sense.

[S]tudies examined into the 1980s the potential to electrify parts of the Powder River Basin Wyoming/Montana low-sulfur coal routes. There were some favorable structured project terms evaluated, then negotiated, and very close to execution. Why? Because there were favorable joint railroad right-of-use aspects for the utility companies and available funding. The internal rates of return for a partnership of utility/railroad/financing had back then a projected rate of return greater than 25%. This was the same period when overall railroad [return on investment] on assets was less than 10-12%.

The financing venture terms in part looked like this: A partnership would spread the risks over multiple parties, not just the railroad company. A financial organization or a bank would initially have been a limited partner. The railroad company would have invested only a token amount of capital and then gradually acquired the partnership from the lenders.

The joint venture structure back then was offering to absorb the initial building cost of the catenary, the power (electricity) distribution and the power generation as a package, with the railroad to pay like a trucker does for road use. It was to be a railroad trains pay-as-you-go deal. Electric locomotive energy regeneration—putting power back into the grid through regenerative dynamic braking—was part of the cost-benefit analysis calculations.

Therefore, four decades ago, innovative railroads and outside parties were structuring interesting feasible deals for electrification.

Because most of the Powder River coal transits the windswept Great Plains to move the coal from where it is to where low-sulfur fuel has a high subjective value, the most effective way to get wind power from where it is to where the households are might have been to use the wind-source electricity in traction motors.  Electricity keeping its own books was a thing on Western railroads more than a century ago.

It's crucial, though, to install the catenary where it's most useful.  It might be that the Association is, to repeat, engaging in preemptive lobbying by arguing against electrifying the entire railroad freight network.

Back to [the association’s] 2020 paper: Its broad assertion is this: “Mandating electrification of the freight rail network is not a viable means for reducing [greenhouse gas] emissions. Proposals that would require all or part of our nation’s freight rail network to be electrified should be set aside to focus on other alternatives.”

AAR relies in part on a study from 2016, when there was no “off the shelf” near-zero-emission locomotive technology sufficient for North American linehaul freight service. But the study encouraged additional research.

As to a government mandate of electrification? Let’s agree that would indeed be premature.

How hard would it be to start engineering with the General Electric series of rectifier freight motors for Virginian, The Pennsylvania Railroad, Black Mesa and Lake Powell and the like, or to scale Austrian or Swedish freight motors for North American use?  Mr Blaze concurs, "Full electrification requires less testing since there is railway electrification already in place worldwide. That body of evidence should not be ignored, should it?"  In addition, we're getting better at running beyond the wires than we were in the 1930s, and the onboard battery locomotive has gone from concept to prototype.