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Originally Posted by Busy Bee
I'm not sure if I can think of anything more depressing than the last electric interurban converting to diesel. The end of American wisdom as far as I'm concerned.
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Nostalgia is not a good way to make public policy decisions. Except for the street running/braking issue in Michigan City, there's just not any good reason to stick with expensive, hard-to-maintain electrification. The pollution and energy efficiency and acceleration issues are substantially different now than in 1907.
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Metra Electric's old IC Highliners at least had some style to them. . . Can you imagine that POS design running under overhead in Europe, Japan or Taiwan?
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The new ones were
designed in Japan. Other than Shinkansen sets and Kansai Electric Railway's Ra:pit trainsets, Japanese railways are not noted for railcar design.
But I agree with you that they're butt-ugly. In my opinion, the Highliners were a nice bit of industrial design, the end of the Loewy-Bel Geddes-Teague era of train design.