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Israel starts mainline electrification, orders Bombardier electric locomotives
Sounds interesting. But why are they changing to electric operations?
Jim Kerner, I don’t know why for sure, but I’d guess this may have something to do with the precariousness of oil availability for Israel. Otherwise, it makes good economic sense if traffic is growing.
I was talking to one of my railroader coworkers who originally came from Israel the other day about this. My jaw dropped a bit when he said that the railroad in in Israel has been under invested in since the country’s independence as it was founded by a lot of Holocaust survivors. These people had bad memories of trains and where they took people hence it is only now with a new generation that the railroad is being upgraded.