ZOMBIE PROJECT
A zombie project is a concept which, no matter how many times you kill it, just gets up again and staggers forward, but with no hope of gaining real life. I therefore assume that no matter how good this article is, it will soon be forgotten when some twerp decides that if electrification costs so much per mile, then just do fewer miles and save money.
Have you ever wondered why discontinuous electrification is never proposed by people in the business? Could it be they are just Luddites living in the past, unwilling to take on new ideas? Perhaps the electrification contractors want us to keep throwing money at them. Well, they do, but that’s not the reason. The reason is…IT DOESN’T SAVE ANY MONEY! Which is why I always refer to it as ‘disingenuous electrification’, so let’s call it DE for now.
ZOMBIE DEFINITION
To be clear, we are not talking about the odd dead section under a bridge which can be coasted through with about 20 seconds of clonking of contactors and loss of power or regeneration. My first exposure to the DE concept was a proposal for Crewe – Chester electrification, put over as if this was the first time some real intelligence had been applied to electrification. I …