Surely the line would still need upgrading to accept passenger trains, even if not electricifcation?
The line has had a significant amount of work done on it as the volume of stuff from the port has rise, I am sure I read somewhere now that is has 46 trains a day running on it. The gauge is obviously the same and the freight trains are significantly heavier. Not sure about signalling and that might need an upgrade, certainly if you have trains stopping at various spots on the way and maybe points etc would have to be added to allow trains to cross tracks and go back the way they came e.g. if you could only build the platform on one side (i.e. pub side) so dropping off would be ok but when returning if going back the same way, train might have to go reverse through points onto the return track if that makes sense - the kind of thing they do now at Bhead Central etc when dealing with delayed trains.
The major cost would be the station I think still... but would they do it just for one station or would they have to re-open the other stops, i.e. the Anfield station is £15m, but if you have to open 4 other stations is starts getting very expensive.
From a cost perspective, how many people would actually get the train to their, it is still a decent walk albeit a nice straight line. But say you get 25,000 on the train at I dunno £5 return from town. 27 home games... 675,000 tickets sold £3.375m pa... is it worth it for Merseyrail.
The other thing on the electrification front is that with the new carbon initiatives etc, the plan is for all commercial rail routes to be electrified so diesel trains can be phased out and the date set for that to be completed is 2040.
