Railway electrification

There has been already a thread dedicated to discussing about solutions to Peak Oil, but participant of that discussion has come up with the following solution: electrification of railways.

IMO all railways in the world should be electrified. Not only countries wouldn't have to import oil for these railways, but also the speed of the railway would be faster. The fastest electric train in the world (German InterCityExpress train) is faster than the fastest diesel train in the world.

Have you taken into account, electric generation costs for these railways?

If the line serving the railway goes off, the trains stop.
As they would if the grid - a rare thing - would go down.

Better to have individually powered units that can operate on their own.

Do you at least have diesel-ELECTRIC trains in america? Not that that helps much either.

Hey, if the electrisity goes off, it's not antarctica. And delays happen every day anyway. And nobody dies on a train with a food cart. And they don't die of other things either. And when all the grid is down, their destination is also closed for that same time.

[edit on 29-4-2006 by Christian IX]

The US should never have abandoned passenger rail service. Yes, we still have Amtrak, but it is something of a disaster.

Europe enjoys their rail service. We should have examined their system before we dismantled ours.

Train engines in America are electric driven. There is a diesel generator that powers the electric motor. This is quite an efficient system actually since you do not need massive transformers and you don't loose all that energy in the transmission of the power over the rails etc. It is also a much safer system that running massive currents through thousands of miles of ungaurded track. Can you imagine the impact it would have on wildlife alone not to even mention the human cost of such a systems little accidents.

Besides these arguments all electricity is produced by using some form of energy and in this country that energy is mostly either dirty nuclear or dirty fossil fuel ie oil gas or coal.

As to mass transit by train you have to first convince people that getting on a publicly owned and publicly peopled vehicle is preferable to cozying up in your own privately owned and personally operated vehicle. Independance is after all a way of life in this country. I would much rather spend a few extra bucks, import an extra barrel from Chile and drive my own vehicle than have to sit in an uncomfortable seat next to smelly sam the local drunk on the way home from work. You can keep your train transit I will keep my minivan and motorycycle.

Originally posted by Johannmon

...You can keep your train transit I will keep my minivan...

Yes, and in the end, we will all pay for your independence. Selfishness is what put us in this position in the first place.

[edit on 5/3/2006 by Bibliophile]