Perhaps the easiest fact to digest is that the railroads use about 3% of the annual fossil fuel used in the USA, and deliver about 42 percent of the gross ton miles. If you want to know what the biggest polluter is, just look in your driveway and at that 18-wheeler on the interstate.
I had one of my career assignments in the "Electric Locomotive Study Group" of a major locomotive builder. While we built and sold electric locomotives with a short time rating of up to 10,000 horsepower (for domestic passenger service), the starting tractive effort, what size train the locomotive could start, was no better than a U30C due to adhesion limitations.
Electrification does not provide any flexibility vs a self-contained power unit. There has to be catenary everywhere an electric locomotive would run. A diesel can run anywhere.
All, or nearly all, overseas electric railroads are government agencies where cost is no issue, and a significant portion of that traffic is passenger, where the installed HP to reach high speed is a benefit, and the relatively low starting tractive effort is not a liability. I have inspected and photographed overseas railroads that are electrified. Their freight trains are so short that I was able to photograph an entire train in one frame.
I would also like to point out that the 1934 PRR electrification cost was supported with long term loans at very favorable rates by Uncle Sam, not by a private company.
