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Comment by jcranmer | Hacker News Reader

> The continental rail network started off with coal powered steam trains, then diesel, now diesel-electric and even some pure electric locomotives.

The actual evolution process was wood-powered steam trains, then coal-powered steam, then electric, then diesel-electric.

Yes, in the US, several railroads electrified then deelectrified, because it turns out that (for freight at least) diesel-electrics get you most of the useful benefits of electric locomotives without all of the problems of having to string up electric catenary and worry about provisioning traction power stations for your 1000s of miles of mainline track.

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There can be a substantial cost saving switching from diesel to electric fully.

India for example has been investing in this convertion last 2-3 years and are expecting 4-5 billion dollars savings every year by going full electric in the next 2 - 3 years.

The networks are very different , single public owner/lots of private owners , frieght/passenger ratios are different, Density is different etc,however there can be cost savings

Yes in India gets coal super cheap and they use a ton of it to make their electric. All these electric cars are just coal cars, all these electric trains are just coal trains

They are also building quite a bit of solar power. The obvious difference between actual coal trains and electric trains (even running on coal electricity), is that you don't need to change a thing in the trains themselves to reduce the emissions of the system. Certainly it would be nicer if India already generated their electricity carbon neutrally, but moving from coal powered electric trains to PV powered electric trains is so much easier than from diesel trains.

Sure, but most of Europe use electric and we generate a lot of our electricity from nuclear and hydro. By switching to electric India can change to other sources of electricity in the future.

Ah yes, I love Factorio.

underated comment.

It is in parallel to solar investments in station and on top of trains and along the tracks as well. My understanding is that they plan to go fully green.

Given the variations in solar generation and no mention of storage I am assuming it is equivalent green power to offset rather than actual used.

That was before we got this good at making batteries — and we're still getting better.

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