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Originally Posted by denizen467
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I have a crazy question. Has anyone ever thought of storing electric power aboard trainsets so that overhead power lines can be omitted over certain stretches (whether just 100s of feet or over much longer stretches)? You could even have a separate "battery car" which would be 1 added railcar just as a diesel locomotive today is 1 additional railcar. The way battery technology is evolving due to the electric-car boom, maybe this could be become practicable before long. I can't think of a major impetus to invest in the technology other than deleting catenaries for urban aesthetics, though. But if we get to a point where somewhere needed electrification is forestalled for years and years by NIMBYs, maybe it could be a solution.
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Many electric trains coming on line these days use regenerative breaking, and at least some of them use batteries to store it instead of just dumping it back onto the grid. So the answer to your question, at least in terms of the "100s of feet" would be that they already exist. I'm not sure how many hundreds of feet currently use batteries would support, though, certainly not miles worth.