Hello!
According to the latest update, maybe you could release a separate mod "James' Electric Trains Plus" so as not to make changes to other mods in your mod?
Otherwise, it turns out to be a mess of data, when one mod contains data from other mods.

Hmm, what did the update disturb for you? I expected the changes would have very little impact as they are mostly cosmetic.

You do bring up an interesting question, I make changes to other mods too, in particular Power Overload.
It would be sort of odd, but I could make a "mod pack" and place the changes into different optional mods.
I could also make startup options to include the mod changes. Maybe this is better?

Most likely it will be better if you make changes to some other mods, as separate mods, with the prefix "Fix" or "Plus".
There is no particular problem, but no one will be able to get the current changes unless you install your mod, but since you are doing a good thing (improving the user experience), it is better to release them separately.
And in general, if this is a separate mod with some kind of improvement (visual / software, etc.), it will be much easier for any user (or editor / modder) to understand what was changed and where to look for it :))))

P.S. I would never have thought that you would release some update for the mod with the railroad, for which I express my gratitude that you make other mods better :)))

By the way, I talked to the author of the mod so that he would make a beautiful illumination of the rails at night, but he never implemented it, I had to do it for myself in this version, although on turns it does not look very beautiful :(

But if you don't pick on it, it looks quite nice :)))

I did not add these changes sooner, partly because I agree, the icon and the technology prerequisite change should be out of scope for this mod. However, the modifications to the rails.next_upgrade and the rail interconnect do belong, as they are integration with the overhaul.

Previously, I had these changes in my personal mod of mods, but figured someone else might like them, as they do have relevance while playing the overhaul. I could make a mod with just the cosmetic changes, but they are not enough to me, to justify making and maintaining another mod. Especially since I hope the author will incorporate similar modifications, then I could remove these changes.

Maybe version 1.11.0 is little better?

Yes sir, boss! :)
One more question, what kind of visual changes does this make?

    data.raw["accumulator"]["james-rail-accumulator"].icon = nil
    data.raw["accumulator"]["james-rail-accumulator"].icons =
        data.raw["straight-rail"]["james-powered-rail-straight-rail"].icons

I don't quite understand what exactly this changes, since the battery is already hidden.

And this does not affect the power supply of electric rails?

    rail_pole.supply_area_distance = 0

It seems that there is a setting in the mod that rails can power the surrounding area.

In my testing, this has no effect. But maybe my tests are incorrect or incomplete?

This seems to be the supply area of the pole that is part of the rail interconnect. James sets this to 2.
It should not effect supply area of the powered rails.

I will remove that change and the graphical change to a medium pole.
Since the interconnect will then be a supply pole, I will also change the rule from connecting to medium poles to small poles and medium poles.

I just uploaded version 1.11.1