[Manuel_D]

Overhead wires would involve a significant infrastructure investment. Not too much of an issue with more densely populated areas like Europe - and countries like France and Japan already do use overhead wires - but it is not cost competitive in sparse locations like much of North America.

It's true that it's contingent on a carbon-free source of hydrogen. But if something like thermochemical hydrogen production through nuclear [1] or solar takes off, hydrogen fuel represents an energy-dense fuel that could be used in lieu of fossil fuels in many applications.

1. https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/gc/gc57inf-2-att1_e...

[diordiderot]

> Overhead wires would involve a significant infrastructure investment.

Yeah building dozens of large scale hydrogen plants, trenching and welding pipelines, building massive excess of necessary renewable energy, figuring distribution networks, deciding storage & container standards, house retrofits etc to run our society will be much easier than ...(checks notes)... Hanging wires

[Manuel_D]

A hydrogen economy is likely going to be developed anyway, to decarbonize air transport and maritime shipping. Piggy backing on top of this maybe be cheaper than the ~$700 billion (probably closer to a trillion if we include Canadian rail) required to electrify North American rail transport.

[hedora]

Most rail stations are wired for water and electricity already, and small scale hydrogen crackers are already being deployed commercially in the US.

That addresses all your concerns, except maybe that people will want to produce hydrogen at home from their own solar arrays. That's expensive, but arguably unnecessary, since the hydrogen would mostly just be used to power cars.

[mcv]

> "Countries like France and Japan already do use overhead wires"

Don't most countries already use these? World wide, a third of all rails is electrified in some way, and for long-distance rail, that's bound to be overhead.

Most European rail is electrified. So hydrogen or any other diesel replacement is only relevant for very rural, very sparsely used lines.

[johnwalkr]

Even in Japan, about 30% of rail (by distance) is not electrified. It’s more than 40% in France. Generally these are lower usage, so electrification isn’t justified. Hydrogen might be a good option in cases where the route is too long for batteries.

[Manuel_D]

If a third of all rail is electrified then two thirds are not. Most of North America's railways are not electrified. Be cautious when looking at statistics on electrification: many results specifically only show electrification of passenger railways.

[mcv]

Yeah, the statistics on that are very interesting. Many European countries, but also countries like India, have 70+% of their rail network electrified Even Russia has 51% electrified, but in the US it's only 0.92%, Canada 0.20%, and Mexico 0.12%. No idea why North America is so adverse to electrification.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_tran... claims to include both passenger and non-passenger networks.

[KennyBlanken]

How dare you argue against the "electrification is too expensive to do in the US!" crowd with facts like "most of the rest of the world does it"!

In the US, the east coast line is electrified from Boston to DC (possibly further? Can't remember.)

[Manuel_D]

In total less than 2,000 miles of track are electrified out of 140,000 miles of track [1]. Boston to DC is electrified only on a specific passenger rail line (along with one route to Philadelphia). The only other electric rail lines are short coal-haulers moving coal from mines to coal power plants.

Europe's lines are economical to electrify because of greater density. Electrifying a rail line costs the same regardless of how many trains use it, so it breaks even in dense and frequently traveled routes but not on sparse lines. Guess which is more common in a less densely populated continent like North America?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_electrification_in_th....

[mcv]

Yet even Russia has 51% of its rail network electrified.

[adgjlsfhk1]

Given that trains need tracks, why is it significant added infrastructure to have wires?

[Manuel_D]

You have to put up wires and a bunch of posts. Googling around, cost estimates are $4.8 million per track-mile [1]. At 140,000 track miles in the US that's $672 billion to electrify the railway network.

Especially if hydrogen becomes very cheap through something like generation through waste-heat from nuclear power plants, hydrogen propulsion may make more sense.

1. https://www.freightwaves.com/news/is-electrifying-the-freigh...

[DoingIsLearning]

> $4.8 million per track-mile

The study you quote is for southern california so that probably is on the high end of an estimate. Probably a different budget for West Virginia.

[hedora]

That's $10K per foot of track, there's no way that is dominated by parts or the actual installation labor.

In other news, one of the maintenance roads for the Golden Gate Bridge was recently completed. Adjusted for inflation, it cost more and took

longer than the bridge itself. If I remember right, one of the bus stops in SF also cost more than the Golden Gate Bridge.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Peanuts. Just one wasted war less, and it is there.