Hard acceleration does affect track and wheel wear even if there is little or no loss of traction. The 755s have just 22% of the wheels driven which is less than most of the BR MKIII trains (mostly 25%), so even with modern wheelsip control electronics, drivers would need to moderate their driving to reduce the chance of slippage, which certainly does cause excessive wear. Also, applying full power generates more heat, therefore the motors are (slightly) less efficient, plus there would be additional power wasted as cooling systems are needed to work nearer their maxima.I don't think much of that is actually true.
Acceleration does not involve braking. And a lot of braking is regenerative on modern stock anyway.
I highly doubt that acceleration has any impact at all on track or wheel wear, unless the wheels are slipping, which again modern electronics takes care of.
Accelerating away quickly rather than dawdling means junctions and sections will be cleared more quickly, helping to keep other traffic flowing smoothly.
Ultimately, it takes the same amount of energy to accelerate several hundred tonnes of train from rest to 100mph, regardless of whether you do that quickly or slowly.
If there was no good reason to have such acceleration rates available, they wouldn't have installed 5.2MW of traction equipment and could have saved lots of money by chopping half of it out.
In short, quick acceleration does not "waste energy" in the slightest.
As far as braking goes, regenerative systems do not return all the power expended in the kinetic energy carried by the train's speed, typical figures can be as high as 60-70%, but that is generally under ideal conditions. The losses include the transformer loss when accelerating as well as decelerating, and the electronic traction control system is not without losses.