Rather inappropriate pictures - an Airedale & Wharfdale line passenger train, and what looks like something from quite another continent.  Hardly gives confidence in DM's grasp of the principles.

And as ever the headlines don't seem to entirely be supported by the facts - “The cost of operating each electric train has surged by more than 200 per cent” when what it seems really happened is just the electricity costs have gone up that much - all the other operating costs (driver wages, track access charges, rollingstock lease/depreciation etc) presumably haven't gone up anything like as much, so the overall increase in operating costs would be much diluted.

The interesting bit seems to be “The maximum price of approximately 80% of the total electricity used to power trains in Britain is fixed until around April 2024.” - i.e. it sounds like few railfreight operators are in a similar position to some of the smaller gas suppliers who went bust recently - i.e. failed to hedge their energy purchases.

I can't see it causing a massive change in rail traction - as far as I'm aware there aren't many spare diesel locos laying around waiting for work and new ones will take ages to commission, so a wholesale swapping from electric to diesel isn't really plausible.

It does highlight our dependency on unreliable imported fossil fuels however (whether gas to generate electricity or any other) so the sooner we're self-sufficient in energy (preferably renewables) the better. At least electric hauled trains have the option of switching between different ultimate fuel sources (gas, nuclear, wind, hydro, biomass, etc etc) - diesel locos are much more limited when the price of oil rockets (as it undoubtedly will if the gas price stays high).

   - Andy.

Rather inappropriate pictures - an Airedale & Wharfdale line passenger train, and what looks like something from quite another continent.  Hardly gives confidence in DM's grasp of the principles.

And as ever the headlines don't seem to entirely be supported by the facts - “The cost of operating each electric train has surged by more than 200 per cent” when what it seems really happened is just the electricity costs have gone up that much - all the other operating costs (driver wages, track access charges, rollingstock lease/depreciation etc) presumably haven't gone up anything like as much, so the overall increase in operating costs would be much diluted.

The interesting bit seems to be “The maximum price of approximately 80% of the total electricity used to power trains in Britain is fixed until around April 2024.” - i.e. it sounds like few railfreight operators are in a similar position to some of the smaller gas suppliers who went bust recently - i.e. failed to hedge their energy purchases.

I can't see it causing a massive change in rail traction - as far as I'm aware there aren't many spare diesel locos laying around waiting for work and new ones will take ages to commission, so a wholesale swapping from electric to diesel isn't really plausible.

It does highlight our dependency on unreliable imported fossil fuels however (whether gas to generate electricity or any other) so the sooner we're self-sufficient in energy (preferably renewables) the better. At least electric hauled trains have the option of switching between different ultimate fuel sources (gas, nuclear, wind, hydro, biomass, etc etc) - diesel locos are much more limited when the price of oil rockets (as it undoubtedly will if the gas price stays high).

   - Andy.