On the Navajo nation. A landlocked electric railroad has hauled the last loads, after 46 years of service. https://navajotimes.com/reznews/workers-say-goodbye-to-coal-train/
This is so sad. I hate to see the immediate effects on those within the cancellation. I know my sympathy doesn't help those affected, I feel sorry for them. But the same rotten results happened when the automobile replaced the horse, and the horse shoe and nail makers. Progress sucks in a way, but we all benefit in a way...eventually. Most, with initiative, seem to adapt to new skills.
I remember reading a Trains Magazine article about the BM&LP when the line opened. It's electrification was modern and efficient in every way. As with steam power, there's something happily appropriate about a locomotive using the same fuel that it hauls.
I don't have scientific data to prove this, but I believe that besides a large increase in US and Canadian oil production, fracking has had a secondary effect of making natural gas supplies more plentiful and cheaper. This has made it more attractive and more economical to run power plants (while meeting environmental regulations) via natural gas than coal. While the railroads have gained some business from oil delivered from fracking production in the North Dakota region, not all that oil gets delivered via rail. But I'll bet almost all the coal which is mined and delivered to power plants is delivered by rail - I don't see trucks on the Interstate transporting coal, and there are no pipelines for coal.
There was an attempt to deliver coal through pipelines as a slurry. I don't the results of the test, but it obviously was not successful.
Dang, another electric railroad shuts down. Milwaukee Road, then the BC Rail "Tumbler Ridge", now this. Bummer
Many coal fired power plants are switching to natural gas that has been developed in the exploration of the US & Canada for oil with fracking and the other means of exploration. Natural Gas at present is cheaper than coal and is believed to be more eco friendly. The power plant that the BM & LP served has been closed in favor of a newly constructed plant that does not use coal.
I should have traveled up that way and do some camera stuff, but it was remote and a long way away. I used the word "landlocked" in the thread OP to indicate a non-interchanging railroad. Is there a more elegant word to use?