While this is probably not an insurmountable problem, have planners looked at the following:

Many experts I've talked with tell me that true high-speed passenger rail (150+ mph) is practical only with electrification for a variety of reasons. (I've talked to a variety of European railroad officials as well as officials of Alstom and Siemens -- as well as electrical engineers -- and done cab rides on both the French TGV and German ICE trains.) I won't go into the reasons here.

But, would bringing overhead catenary into Los Angeles Union pose a problem? In other words, are there feeder lines on which double-stack freight trains operate? I assume so.

Yes, it is possible to string catenary very high and have pantographs that are designed for two height ranges. These types of pantographs are used on the Chunnel trains, as the catenary in the terminals and Chunnel is substantially higher than on other European lines.


And to the original point in this thread. Yes, all freight railroads are currently extremely wary about liability issues, particularly if an incident is the freight railroad's fault and many passengers are injured or killed as a result.

I looked at some aspects of this in a piece that I did for the April/May issue of Mass Transit, a transit trade magazine:

[url=http://[www.masstransitmag.com]]http://www.masstransitmag.com/publication/article.jsp?pubId=1&id=5921&pageNum=1[/url]

This is a very long piece -- about 3,000 words -- on issues that affect passenger train (particularly commuter train) operations in freight corridors.

-- Ernest