(10-07-2022, 02:41 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: I wonder if the electrical systems could actually supply a mainline locomotive though. In some ways you think no way that would be built to those standards, we're just moving around a few little LRVs. But then you also look at how ridiculously overbuilt our system is (with the significant exception of pedestrian and station infra...because you know...wouldn't wanna spend too much on that) and frankly, it's possible that it would.
Power requirements really depend on acceleration, maintaining speed is easy. LRVs accelerate significantly faster than freight, which balances the electrical demand somewhat. I'm sure with sufficiently slow acceleration it could work in theory.
In practice, we have 750 VDC electrification. Common for trams, subways, occasional commuter rail, but not used by freight. So any locomotive would have to be custom for our system. At that point you could have a custom adjustable offset pantograph for the gauntlet track... but we're way into fantasy land.