the sources are out of order!
conservation is far and away the best bang for the buck--California has remained in the bottom 3/or 4 states in electricity use per capita for decades. We were a pioneer in "bribing" utility customers to conserve. The PUC educated the utility companies that this was cheaper than the cost of increasing generating and grid capacity.
Those factshave not changed. Distributed generation--solar PV, small windmills all over will both decrease the stress on the grid AND supply customer needs at lower net planet damage.
Beyond that, indeed lowering population growth is necessary.
Now as to rail content, Conrail quit freight 1. ATK was reaming hem on rates,2,Electrics were useless for run throughs. The same thing happened to UP/SP DD's/turbines--everyone wanted standard stuff which could cross corporate boundaries.

Some years back, a computer guy modeled how much energy could be generated from wind along the UP main in Wyoming--his ## before the SP acquisition claimed enough juice for the entire freight operation. Certainly not current ##, but with regen on Donner, the Cascades etc, a large amount would be way cheaper than diesel especially as oil is not likely to ever get back to 1980's prices. And please note straight electrics have lower maintenance and longer life cycles.