Reply #7: I just realised something.

[TheMadMonk]

As the outbound train leaves cars behind and gets lighter fuel expenditure drops, beyond even the savings achieved by not repeatedly restarting the train.

In fact. The most efficient goal would be a network of interconnected loops around which the locomotives remained in continuous motion, stopping only for maintenance. Electric or possibly even nuclear power for remote areas would be the obvious choices. The incorporation of strategically located bi-direct loops would simplify scheduling enormously.

Beyond that, on an electrified network, discard the notions of locomotive and shunter all together. Each car is individually powered. A control car manages the cars most closely adjacent in front of or behind, even if they separate to allow the insertion of cars into the middle of a moving train. With sufficient functional autonomy, even physical couplings become redundant.

The ideal goal being to accelerate from stationary, each goods car only once and to bring it to a halt only at its final destination.

Yes, it would mean construction or reconstruction of a great deal of infrastructure, but it's coming, whether we like it or not, unless we are willing to put nuclear power plants on public roads, or alternately divert huge swathes of agricultural land to bio-fuel production. The fuel prices that started this discussion might be geopolitically influenced at the moment, but peak oil makes them inevitable, regardless.

Tax/excise breaks, such as those called for in the article quoted in the OP, provide only temporary relief and protection for the the threatened industries, pass the increasing cost onto members of the public one way or another no matter what. A comprehensive long term solution must be found. Targeted protection is no such solution.