"From the moment I understood the weakness of asphalt, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of the Steel Interstate. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Dynamo. Your kind cling to your trucks, as though roads will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass you call fuel will run dry, and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved, for the electron is immortal… Even in death I serve the Conductor."
If the government owned the trackway, there would be constant fights in Congress about appropriating enough money to maintain it well. And the truth is that the lands granted to the rail lines are long gone from their ownership. They have narrow strips of land a few dozen feet on either side of their tracks today, most of which pierce dozens of small towns in each state they cross. Those small towns are not going to want very high tension lines marching through their cores. Sure, some ROW's could become transmission corridors, but out west where the generation is so productive there are only a few lines.
For instance, to get juice out of Arizona to the Midwest one would need to use the BNSF or UP trackways to the east and northeast. You have to get beyond Clovis and El Paso before there are more than two corridors. Even if you used Megavolt transmission on it, that's not all that much capacity.
Wind power out of eastern Wyoming is somewhat easier, because there are several decrepit "granger" routes that might be useful, but, again, the "devil is in the details", especially east of the Missouri where there are lots of railroad rights of way but also LOTS of little towns along them.
"From the moment I understood the weakness of asphalt, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of the Steel Interstate. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Dynamo. Your kind cling to your trucks, as though roads will not decay and fail you. One day the crude biomass you call fuel will run dry, and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved, for the electron is immortal… Even in death I serve the Conductor."
If the government owned the trackway, there would be constant fights in Congress about appropriating enough money to maintain it well. And the truth is that the lands granted to the rail lines are long gone from their ownership. They have narrow strips of land a few dozen feet on either side of their tracks today, most of which pierce dozens of small towns in each state they cross. Those small towns are not going to want very high tension lines marching through their cores. Sure, some ROW's could become transmission corridors, but out west where the generation is so productive there are only a few lines.
For instance, to get juice out of Arizona to the Midwest one would need to use the BNSF or UP trackways to the east and northeast. You have to get beyond Clovis and El Paso before there are more than two corridors. Even if you used Megavolt transmission on it, that's not all that much capacity.
Wind power out of eastern Wyoming is somewhat easier, because there are several decrepit "granger" routes that might be useful, but, again, the "devil is in the details", especially east of the Missouri where there are lots of railroad rights of way but also LOTS of little towns along them.
I applaud your efforts. There is at least some mainstream attention to this:
https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/12/24218547/caltrain-electric-train-us-lags-behind-india-china-eu