I may have run across that professor, or certainly similar ones, in my working life. Their work may not have been published, but it might have ended up in an official model - a lot of environmental modeling for regulatory work, until very recently, has been "back of the envelope" quality at best, and still has aspects of it. Often, that's OK - "good enough" is often enough for making decisions. But more precision is demanded now so the underlying data and analysis must be better to support that. Some of the research I was involved with was targeted at improving that at least for roads.

One problem that leads to opinions like your professor's is that railroad research is not as widely known or published as road research. Roads get the attention of a good-sized chunk of the transportation research establishment because, well, that's where the money is (as Willie Horton allegedly once said about banks). Railroads, being private enterprise, may not want the details published for competitive reasons, and in any case the money simply isn't there to do a lot of work. So what you see (and often laugh or groan at) is often the product of government (mainly) and academic organizations that don't talk with railroads much, and "back of the envelope" or worse tends to be the level of modeling done. There are exceptions, but finding them may be a hunting expedition.

Perhaps that's one approach to limiting the excessive production of papers - limit the funding in hopes that only the better ones get done? That doesn't really work, though, because the funding decisions then end up at least partly political (who you know) rather than based on merit (what you know).

On the throttle notches - I feel for you because I've had similar conversations with bosses and even researchers. I've had to explain, without it really getting through, to a lot of people that a "throttle" works the same, really, no matter what kind of power system it's in. If you need more power, you burn more fuel (or pull it out of a battery or a wire faster, which eventually results in burning more fuel of some kind someplace else), which requires more "throttle" to provide it. When cruising on the level at moderate speeds, you don't have much throttle opening - just enough to balance friction and air resistance. Even on the back of the envelope, you can use that concept if you know something about the topography of the route, and the typical speed (NOT the speed limit!) and hp/ton of the type of train(s) you are looking at. Amazing how many allegedly intelligent people (and regulators/politicians) can't understand that, even though they do it every day while driving.