> Another advantage of Regenerative Braking on electrified trackage is the ability to feed power from the locomotive back into the overhead wire, basically generating free electricity.

Won't work unless there is a load to dissipate the generated power. The VGN used liquid rheostats at its powerhouse to do this.


> On Milwaukee Road Lines West the substation meters would actually run backwards !!!

This is a long standing RR legend. There was a credit meter mounted on the panel, next to the power consumption meter. I asked the substation operator about it, and he showed them to me. The credit meter would run only if power was going back to the power company. Regeneration by one train which powered another (uphill) didn't necessarily register on the credit meter unless the power went back to power company's transmission lines and to the next MILW substation for conversion back to 3kv DC.