I love trains. Always have.
Took my first train ride at a very young age with my mother and brother from D.C. to Birmingham to visit mom’s family.
After the Navy, my private sector work was based in McLean. I had regular business in New York I took Amtrak whenever feasible.
Trains on the eastern corridor of Amtrak are powered by electricity currently provided by gas-fired power plants. There is a faltering and breathtakingly expensive attempt in California to create a high-speed electric rail system. That is pretty much it for electric trains other than short-haul commuters.
But the freight rail locomotives that transport 43% of America’s long-haul freight and Amtrak passenger locomotives outside Amtrak’s Northeast corridor are powered by diesel. Lots of it.
Axios reported in August that “High-speed rail remains a faraway dream in Virginia.” In dreamy progressive fashion, that article reported “costs” of overseas high-speed train trips as if they included only the costs of the passenger tickets.
Nice try.
The damn-the-torpedoes greens, and the commercial interests that hope to get unimaginably wealthy feeding their obsessions, will leave no stone unturned or dollar unspent to transform trains to electric.
Virginia, of course, has its own “not-for-profit” pushing the profitable part of that agenda. Continue reading