Talk:Railroad electrification in the United States

De-electrification
Could we have some text on why this would be done? - Denimadept (talk) 20:37, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
 * There's no sane reason to do that, other than a line becoming almost obsolete due to major loss of traffic, so that the costs of maintaining the system become higher than the benefits. Other than that, on a medium or highly busy line, electric railroads operate by far more efficient and economic than non-electrified ones. In Germany, the cost per kilometer of an electric train (per ton and mile) is one fifth of that of a diesel train. -- Alexey Topol (talk) 06:29, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

In the USA, the primary reason was the introduction of the diesel locomotive! Bhtpbank (talk) 22:30, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

This article needs a major overhaul
This article is a stub. It only lists some isolated electrification projects, without visible order, and without giving an overall picture of the history and development, and ultimately demise, of electrification in the US. I am also missing stats as to the overall length of today's electrified tracks in the US. It used to be 22,000 miles back in the 1950s, but now it must only be a faction of that, with little miles remaining. -- Alexey Topol (talk) 06:25, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm working on this page ... and have already added a lot of railroads. My next step is to organize them by date of introduction. Bhtpbank (talk) 22:32, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Total length of electrified lines
Wikipedia tells figures about the remotest places of the globe. Why doesn't it tell the total lenght of all railroads of USA, run electrically today.--Ulamm (talk) 01:32, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I've recently made a table of length of this for Soviet electrification: and would like to compare it to the US.  So I started an "Overview ..." section to put US data in.  I put here a guesstimate of peak mileage, and found the the extinct ICC (US Gov't) once published statistics for electrification of Class I railroads (see footnote in this section).  I will not have time to get this data since it is likely in storage at some library and hope someone else looks into this and creates a table or graph.


 * try cia world fact book, that's where the data comes from 2.25.33.144 (talk) 21:36, 23 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I might be able to put a figure on that ... and you may be surprised at the number (larger than you may have expected). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bhtpbank (talk • contribs) 22:32, 23 December 2012

Change of Quality Rating
I have done of lot of work in recent weeks to add to the list of projects, and to include references. It is my view that this is no longer a "start" class article, and can be safely upgraded to "C" class, thus I have changed the quality rating. We still need some photos and maps.Bhtpbank (talk) 01:08, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

post-script: I am going to find some images to add, but if anyone can help with their knowledge of wikipedia commons, then this would be appreciated. Bhtpbank (talk) 01:10, 3 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I think this article needs to be reorganized into two sections: present and proposed electrified railroads and formerly electrified railroads. --agr (talk) 01:29, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I was thinking along those lines, but by date of introduction and whether or not they are still operational. I am happy to discuss Bhtpbank (talk) 01:38, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I think an operational and future vs defunct organization would be more interesting to our readers. The past is worth recording but a bit monotonous: railroads experiment with electrification early in the 20th century but drop it when diesels come along. If you want, a timeline could be added to the article to provide that view of the history. Also, per your query on my talk page, I've added a source for the California High Speed Rail need. Thanks for your hard work.--agr (talk) 03:24, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Electric power type
In Europe, there are a few standard catenary power types to allow relative interoperability, varying by AC/DC, voltage, and frequency (for AC). It is difficult for electric trains to operate on multiple power types. Is there any system of standard power types in use in electrified US rail routes, or are they more or less arbitrary, requiring special trains for each line? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 20.133.40.85 (talk) 14:40, 6 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Most of the systems discussed in this article are no longer in service. (The article needs to make this clear.) The only major electrified system in the U.S. is in the northeast and is used by Amtrak and several commuter lines. That system uses AC in several voltages and frequency combinations, but Amtrak's locomotives accommodate them all. MetroNorth also uses EMUs that run on both catenary AC and DC third rail on its New Haven line. New systems being proposed (eg California High Speed Rail) would standardize on 25KV 60Hz, similar to much of Europe except for the frequency.--agr (talk)

Split for PRR
The various Pennsylvania Railroad sections of this article ought to be split off into a new article called the Electrification of the Pennsylvania Railroad. -User:DanTD (talk) 17:20, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Frequency?
What frequency was the 11kV on the N&W? Tabletop (talk) 10:26, 29 July 2014 (UTC)