jack action said:
That is the stupidest idea I've heard in a long time. The advantage of a locomotive is that its path is already known, therefore a fully electric locomotive can be powered by a wire following the path. Oh, Wait! This idea has already been tried, tested, and developed to death, all is left to do is implement it!
A battery cannot offer any advantage over a wire in this case.
UP is fairly savvy, with a long history of innovation in-house, and with suppliers. It's not an all electric system, but rather a combo diesel-electric + battery. One advantage may be dynamic braking, which become regenerative breaking if using the downgrade part of the route to recharge the batteries while holding the train without using the mechanical brakes (shoe friction on the wheels of every car).
Yes, it would make sense to electrify - if one could recover the capital costs at a rate to satisfy investors.
Outside of the NE corridor - Washington, DC to NY City to Boston, the longest electrified line was the Milwaukee Road between Harlowton, MT and Avery, ID (Rocky Mountain Division), through the Belt Mountains, over Pipestone Pass in the Rockies, and over St. Paul Pass in the Bitterrott Mountains between Alberton, MT and Avery, ID, and separately, the Coast Division between Othello, WA to Tacoma, WA through the Saddleback and Cascade Mountains.
https://milwaukeeroadarchives.com/Electrification/AProudEraPasses.pdf
There was a lot that went wrong - poor management, deferred maintenance, which lead to increasing derailments and slow orders, loss of business. . . . .
The Milwaukee Road ran out of money and time, and declared bankruptcy in 1977.
UP has survived along with BNSF (merger of BN and ATSF), and both represent a duopoly west of Chicago, St. Louis and New Orleans for E and W freight traffic.