Being from the EU for me all trains are electric (except many in Germany only) so I do not feel any special excitement but observe a thing: the idea of all wagon individually powered is ancient, very ancient, like monorails. Both ideas never get spread simply because they are too expensive instead of cheap, in practice.
Electric motors are not expensive as diesel one, they are much more compact etc etc etc but are still much more expensive than a simple wagon without any engine. Meanwhile a larger electric locomotive it's still fast (for instance France TGV, Japan Shinkansen etc) and hyper-fast accelerations are not much welcomed by passengers, so it sound extra added complexity for little to no return. Something not different than some modern tram projects (city buses with electric motors, no battery, and a special trolley to allow get dedicated aerial electricity while rolling on wheels) that in theory sounds good (much less expensive in capex than create new rails in cities) but in practice have so much problems and costs that they are abandoned or will not be replaced because of that.
For my little experience USA rails are much older than most EU ones (meaning, they are much less upgraded) and while that's might sound bad from some "modern" people actually IMVHO it is not much because so far ALL RAILS prove too be simply too costly for most usages, only some freight-only rails are effectively interested, passengers ones can't survive without big public contributions while offering a good service. The Swiss choose to waste an immense amount of resources to keep the service level high, pushing nearly empty trains around, all other countries tend to scale back (while formally state the contrary).