Some very rough back of the envelope calculations, with apologies in advance for imperial units: CSX says a "typical train" might be hauling 3000 tons of freig

Some very rough back of the envelope calculations, with apologies in advance for imperial units: CSX says a "typical train" might be hauling 3000 tons of freight 500 miles, using about 3,000 gallons of diesel [1]. Batteries are about two orders of magnitude lower volumetric energy density, so 3,000 gallons of diesel has the same energy as about 300,000 gallons of batteries. Roughly 7.5 gallons per cubic foot, so that's 40,000 cubic feet. But the diesel engine only converts about a third of the energy in the diesel into usable form, while the batteries will be close to 100%, so we actually only need a third as many batteries. I'll round up to 15,000 cubic feet. A standard boxcar is about 6,000 cubic feet interior volume [2], so that would be 2.5 boxcars full of batteries. So battery cars might be feasible. [1] https://www.csx.com/index.cfm/about-us/the-csx-advantage/fuel-efficiency/ https://www.csx.com/index.cfm/about-us/the-csx-advantage/fue... [2] https://www.csx.com/index.cfm/customers/resources/equipment/railroad-equipment/ https://www.csx.com/index.cfm/customers/resources/equipment/...