Why is only 38% of the UK rail network electrified?

[RT4038]

The large Freight Railroads in the USA could never justify electrification, as they have to return a profit and they have their shareholders to keep happy.

Correct

The sheer scale of American railroading makes electrification a non-starter away from urban areas.

The sheer scale of the capital expenditure required would be seen as too great (i.e. it would not keep shareholders happy) as the savings working the traffic electrically wouldn't give the shareholders an adequate return on the capital employed to electrify.

The average US long-distance freight train can several miles in length, and the current draw to start some of these enormous loads would be immense.
In the more remote areas, access to trackside infrastructure could be problematic, as would climatic conditions - from the heat of the Arizona desert to the blistering cold of the North East in Winter would make great demands on the infrastructure.

In the UK, it can be a pain to dispatch maintenance teams to what we think of as remote areas, perhaps ten or twenty miles from a sizeable town and a mile or two from a main road. In the USA, a breakdown in the catenary could possibly be a hundred miles from civilisation and dozens of miles from a main highway, across a desert or in mountainous terrain.

Freight traffic in America is not only highly lucrative, but even the longest freight trains of around 100 cars often run fast and frequently is tightly scheduled and the shippers rely on near split-second 'just-in-time' deliveries. It's doubtful that such a reliable service could be provided using electric traction.

Don't think this is right. The trans Siberian line, and miles of lines in South Africa, inter alia, have been successfully and reliably worked by electric traction, with long trains and remote lines. Anything is possible. However, the electrification in these countries has never had to wash its face as a direct and immediate return on capital employed. Therein lies the issue with the American railroads and their operating and financial framework.

 

[HSTEd]

In the more remote areas, access to trackside infrastructure could be problematic, as would climatic conditions - from the heat of the Arizona desert to the blistering cold of the North East in Winter would make great demands on the infrastructure.

Ironically one of the few electric operated railways in the US for many decades was in the Arizona Desert.

The Black Mesa and Lake Powell railroad operated for decades and only closed because the associated power station did.

The real killer on the US is the adverse opinion of capital expenditure in the US corporate sector and comparatively low load densities.

Heavy Haul railways in the South African desert continue to operate, often making use of 50kV (as Lake Powell did) to reduce current draws and trackside infrastructure requirements.

 

[Meerkat]

Didn't the war hit at just the wrong point for UK electrification - causing the cancellation of many schemes?
Then nationalisation seems to have continued that, though would electrification have been too slow to be done instead of building loads of new steam locos, and was there the labour and steel free for electification at that point?

 

[ac6000cw]

The sheer scale of the capital expenditure required would be seen as too great (i.e. it would not keep shareholders happy) as the savings working the traffic electrically wouldn't give the shareholders an adequate return on the capital employed to electrify.

That's always been a problem to some extent. It was much easier to justify replacing steam power with electric, because steam has high servicing costs (and is labour-intensive to operate and maintain), so if you could fund the upfront capital cost of electrification, the payback in reduced operating costs was substantial. Trouble is, when mainline diesel traction became practical, you could get most of the operating cost advantages of electrification without having to fund the upfront capital cost of it - cue the widespread and rapid replacement of steam with diesel power from the 1940s onwards in the US (from the end of WW2, mainline steam was mostly gone within 10 years) - it was almost a no-brainer.

The present-day economics of diesel power make it really hard/impossible to justify electrification on economic grounds i.e. 'sell it' to shareholders, in the US freight railroad environment. I think you'd need major 'encouragement' on the government side to make it happen e.g. huge rises in carbon taxes on fossil fuels for transport and/or making long-term very low interest loans available to fund the capital investment.