We could then go under wire in high traffic corridiors like the NYC Waterlevel route and then under diesal in mid to low traffic corridors
Principal reason is cost. All the cost of a diesel, and then much of the cost of an electric, with a limited number of entities interested in buying and then maintaining them.
It's getting around to the point where the Conrail-style dual-mode using synthesized AC transmission (and probably involved with some combination of KERS and wayside storage) is becoming attractive in some ways. To my knowledge no Class I is signing contracts even to develop them, in part because the special considerations that made the idea attractive to Conrail in the early Eighties apply almost nowhere else, and the perfectly valid reasons for using catenary on some freight routes don't overcome either opportunity cost or rate of opportunity return on available capital.
Those who have read Kiefer's 1947 survey of motive power all the way through will not be snickering at the idea of going under wire on the Water Level Route (although the idea of retrofitting it in the Park Avenue Tunnels makes me more nervous than a Christian Scientist with appendicitis). What's pictured there would have been highly interesting if implemented...
The only 'high traffic' territory in the country that is 'under wire' is the NEC. When Amtrak gained ownership of the NEC they promptly threw all ConRail through traffic off the NEC. Amtrak allowed freight carriers to service industries that were trackside to the NEC - but no through freights.
So long as through freight service is not permitted on the NEC, there is absolutely no incentive to build any dual power locomotives.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
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