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Electric is objectively cheaper than diesel in the long run but it requires a large capital investment, and railroads aren't going to make that investment unless they can sell excess power onto the grid at a profit which existing antitrust laws don't allow. So for them to even seriously consider electrification, they'd need to be explicitly allowed to also become electric utility companies as well. Thankfully this will probably happen in the next eight years due to the fully stacked Republican government, neither Congress nor the Supreme Court have a desire for a strong antitrust law.
At that point it just comes down to which markets want the most imported power, and that market is (by a large margin) California thanks to how the state (doesn't) regulate it's utilities through loopholes. UP would obviously do their Sunset route and SF their Chief route, since those have the most carloads anyway. They then use power plants built in Arizona or Oklahoma to power CA. Both would make a phenomenal amount of money because CA's power rates are more than double that of midwestern and southern states. And who knows, with Perry as Energy Secretary maybe they might even be allowed to build their own nuclear power plants.
