Wide Gauge Trains?

As I recall, the Erie Railroad regaged the entire railroad in less than two days.

The regauging to the smaller gauge was ordered by President Lincoln, arguably the worst decision of his life. In the United Kingdom the gauge was seven foot, the standard developed by Isambard Kingdom Brunnel.

colorado hirailer posted:

Wasn't the Erie wide gauge (5'?) some time in it's past, as well as several RR's in the south, and a few logging roads? When did the Erie join the herd, and l wonder when the last wide gauge road operated in the 50.

You might want to do your research prior to posting such questions (Google is your friend). The Erie was originally (1830s?) built as 6 foot gauge, i.e. THAT is indeed "wide gauge". Our Standard Gauge is 4 feet 8 1/2 inches, which is darned near 5 foot anyway.

In England the majority of railroad milage was standard gauge from the very beginning because of the influence of George Stephenson and his son and Robert. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, however, convinced the Directors of the Great Western Railway in 1833 to adopt a 7-foot gauge for important London to Bristol line of which he was chief engineer. But as the years went by the broad gauge became more an more of an anomaly. Parliament's "Gauge Commission" reported in favor of the standard gauge in 1846, largely because so many miles of standard gauge were already in service by that date (following the Railway Mania of the 1840s), and the broad gauge was subsequently proscribed except for existing lines (and some extensions) in S-W England and Wales, where GWR held sway. The last broad-gauge train left Paddington in May, 1892 and all broad-gauge lines were then quickly changed over to standard gauge in a huge co-ordinated effort.

Good question...and a great place to ask it.  That's what a forum is for.  And...you got mostly good answers to your questions.  Matt

Pennsylvania broad gauge 5' 2.5" is still in use in New Orleans on the streetcar lines

5' 2.25" is still in use in some SEPTA routes in Philly.

The BART system is funkier yet - 5' 6"

mwb posted:

Pennsylvania broad gauge 5' 2.5" is still in use in New Orleans on the streetcar lines

5' 2.25" is still in use in some SEPTA routes in Philly.

 

And also on the Pittsburgh "T" light rail system.

Bill

I remember in the seventh grade, this RR nut was briefly considered a genius by fellow students when the teacher asked about railroad gauge, and "genius" piped up, "4 feet, 8 1/2".  Always wondered why traction lines often went with oddball gauges?  Were they afraid some Class One was going to try to sneak a train through on their trackage? A book on Cincinnati traction shows a junction where three or more different gauged lines come together, overlaying, spaghetti junction.  Like to see THAT modeled in three rail!

colorado hirailer posted:

Always wondered why traction lines often went with oddball gauges?  Were they afraid some Class One was going to try to sneak a train through on their trackage? 

Yes, that was the reason in many cases as the city granting the franchise to the traction operator back in the day didn't want the city streets to ever be used by steam locomotives hauling freight or passengers. 

And in Pittsburgh another reason for the broader gauge was to provide more stability with a wider base for the cars on the hilly routes with many curves. 

Bill

Tommy posted:

The regauging to the smaller gauge was ordered by President Lincoln, arguably the worst decision of his life. In the United Kingdom the gauge was seven foot, the standard developed by Alfred Kingdom Brunnel.

Alfred?

Nope.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel...

Rusty

Unlike standard gauge, which simply perpetuated the "traditional" spacing of the wheels on carriages and horse-drawn wagons used by collieries and quarries, Brunel chose his 7-foot gauge based on basic engineering principles that he believed were important: for example, the broad gauge allowed for larger boilers, a lower center of gravity, and the use of very large driving wheels (without restricting boiler size), which Brunel specified in order to reduce piston speed. His concern about piston speed came partly from his desire to reduce mechanical wear in an era before synthetic lubricants. One of the original GWR engines, built to Brunel's specifications, had drivers 10 feet in diameter.

Brunel actually designed the whole broad-gauge system based on a thorough engineering analysis of what a railway "should" look like. Some aspects of the broad gauge were not entirely successful in the beginning, but high speeds were regularly attained early on by GWR trains, and the system remained in operation for many decades in SW England and Wales despite the Gauge Commission's report and the spread of standard gauge track elsewhere, largely because GWR monopolized traffic in its region and did not have significant connections with standard-gauge lines. Bristol was trying at the time (1830) to ensure its continued role as a major English port by constructing a first-class mainline railway to London; the Directors gave Brunel, who was always very persuasive, a free hand in design and engineering because they were not particularly concerned about interconnecting with existing systems. Brunel believed, at that early date, that other engineers and investors would appreciate the inherent superiority of the broad gauge and adopt it for major routes.

Brunel drew up the basic mechanical specifications for his first group of locomotives and sent them to several English builders, who were then free to interpret his requirements and to design and build locomotives that met his basic specifications. This decision led to a strange collection of high-driver engines with different designs that were not successful. Daniel Gooch (later Sir Daniel) was then appointed to sort out the motive power issues, which he did by designing several class of remarkably fine broad-gauge engines. Toward the end of the broad gauge era, however, GWR designed various groups of rather inferior engines with basic design compromises that would make them easily convertible from broad gauge to standard gauge when the inevitable change-over occurred. There are many excellent books available about Brunel and Gooch and the GWR, some quite recently published, because public interest in I.K Brunel has grown dramatically during the last 20 years or so.

What about in the South, and other nonconformist steam roads around the country?  This not counting the double flanged logging roads that rolled over parallel logs....

TOMMY  --  Brunel's 7-foot gauge was never the "standard" in England! 

Believe Russia and Finland are 5' gauge, even today.  Was in Oulu, Finland (riding the cab of a 2-8-0) in 1972, and noted Soviet freight cars in the yard.  Wonder if the Soviet Union imposed their gauge on other Soviet satellite countries ?

According to Wikipedia, Finland uses the same gauge that was used at the time in Imperial Russia: 1,524 mm (5 ft). The Finnish system was started in 1862 when Finland was the Grand Duchy of Finland, a region of Imperial Russia. The article goes on to say that the two systems were not linked until 1912 (or 1918, depending on the source) via Saint Petersburg and that Russian trains were not able to use Finnish tracks until a good deal later, when the Finnish loading gauge was increased to match that in Russia.

I've been to Finland a couple of times (my wife was born there) but I'm embarrassed to say that I've never ridden on a Finnish train. 

Here's a little wrinkle (again according to Wikipedia): "The [Imperial Russian] gauge was redefined by Soviet Railways to be 1520 mm (4 ft 11 ²⁷⁄₃₂ in)."

(I don't necessarily believe everything I read in Wikipedia, and I haven't looked for independent verification yet.)

Indian Railways use a gauge of 5'-6" -- I'm not sure why, since the extensive original system was constructed by the British using equipment manufactured at home.

In the early years of railways, their financial backers generally weren't thinking in terms of creating country-wide rail networks, so individual lines were simply built from one terminus to another without much thought given to the benefits of standardization and interconnection. London, for example, originally had a separate terminal station for each of the many railways that entered the city.

B Smith posted:

According to Wikipedia, ...

sorry, but someone would have to say it... lol.

Don't be sorry!! .... my next step is to figure out if any of this information is correct ... e.g. Did the Soviets really shave 4 mm off the gauge standard; and if so, why? ...  e.g. Two different articles gave two different dates for the completion of the rail link between Finland and Russia (1912 and 1918).

I think Wikipedia can be useful .... as long as you already know enough about the subject to spot the errors .... lol ...  

I miss my old Encyclopedia Brittanica.  

Or to put it another way: Not everything in Wikipedia is wrong ....

The gauge of the national railway in Spain is 1668mm or 5 foot, five and five-eights inches.  I went to France (4 foot eight and one half inches) about 6 years ago and rode several trains from Paris to Barcelona Spain. When we rode the last train to Barcelona, it was a through train from France. Talgo, has a gauge changing system. Just as the french train gets to the spanish frontier, the french electric locomotive moves to the back of the train and "pushes" the passenger cars through the gauge changing track and is met on the other side by a spanish locomotive. Here is an in-depth article on this system: https://www.google.com/url?sa=...32BX7_9oRCIPBZAh7kRg  

Not sure that Lincoln ever ordered all railroads be changed to standard gauge? Since railroads were not regulated by the federal government, but by the states, there was little power he would have had to enforce such an order - although, given the importance of moving men and materiel by train in the Civil War, I suppose it could have been some kind of emergency decree or something. Since so much of US railroads were already standard gauge, would have been very difficult to convert them all to 6' gauge to match the small pct. of track already built to that gauge by the Erie.

I believe in that time Congress did decree that any transcontinental railroads chartered from that point on had to be built to standard gauge, so railroads chartered during the Civil War (Union Pacific, Northern Pacific) were standard gauge.

Of course, none of this affected the Confederacy! Southern lines were built to a variety of gauges, and in many cases weren't connected to other rail lines. One more problem in fighting the war, as it made it hard for them to move soldiers and supplies from place to place.

From: The American Railroad Network 1861-1890 - Taylor and Neu

Railroads Mileage by Gauges in the U.S. and Canada January 1, 1861

Gauge,(Number of Railroads),[Miles of Road]

6'0"  (14),[1777],    5'6"  (21),[2896],  5'4"  (2),[182],   5'0"  (63),[7267], 4'10" (39),[3294],  4'9.25"  (1),[120],  

4'8.5" (210), [17,712]  

Solving The Gauge Differentials - Compromise wheels, Sliding Wheels, and Car Hoists.

Compromise Wheels - Wheels had a 5 inch surface which permitted the car to run over gauges as narrow as 4'8.5" and as broad as 4'10".  Such cars were in use as early as 1860 and by 1870 there were thousands of compromise cars in service. These cars were of no use in interchange with 5' or 6' gauges.  

Sliding Wheels - In 1863 the railroads experimented with cars having wheels designed to slide on their axles.  These cars could be accommodated to both standard and broad gauge and could be easily shifted from one gauge to the other if at junction points the track widened or narrowed gradually. By the early 1870's the Grand Trunk and its connections were reported to have in operation as many as a thousand cars with sliding wheels.

Car Hoists - More successful than sliding wheel cars were car hoists, usually referred in their day as "elevating machines.". The hoists were used at transfer points to lift the bodies of cars, either passenger or freight, while trucks of one gauge were exchanged for those of another, without it being necessary to unload the cars.  By such means the 6' Erie exchanged traffic with the standard gauge Great Western of Canada.  By 1880 elevating machines had become familiar sights to travelers in America [in places such as] Cincinnati Ohio, Lynchburg, Virginia, Louisville, East Louisville, Rowland, Nortonville and Henderson Kentucky; Evansville, Indiana; Milan, Tennessee; Mobile, Alabama; and New Orleans, Louisiana.  The tracks at such junction points had three or four rails to accommodate the cars of different gauges, while "acres of extra trucks," some of one gauge, some of another, stood in the yards.

Standardization

During the 1870's, rapid progress toward the adoption of the standard gauge [4' 8.5"]was made all over American except in the part of the South east of the Mississippi. A few roads totaling less than 3% of the mileage made the change by adding a third rail. A number of railroads made an abrupt change to the standard ( the Grand Trunk of Canada in 1874 from 5'6" and the D,L&W from 6' in 1876.  By 1880 the 4'10" gauge which had been common in Ohio and New Jersey had, except for 52 miles, been converted to Standard.  By 1880 81% of all railroad mileage in the US was equipped to accommodate rolling stock of standard gauge. Of this, 11% of total mileage was of 4'9" gauge, which for practical purposes was also standard, since equipment was usually exchanged between roads of these two gauges "without objection."

Post Civil War construction/re-construction adopted the standard gauge everywhere except east of the Mississippi where 5' gauge remained the standard...  Nevertheless, the rapid spread of the standard gauge outside of the South and the need to facilitate North-South trade tended gradually to extend the mileage of standard gauge track...Finally, during the decade of eighties, the needs of through intersectional trade led to the almost complete abandonment of the 5' gauge.

  On February 2, 1886, representatives of all of the important broad-gauge lines in the South met at Atlanta, Georgia to discuss ways and means of effecting a change of gauge on the more than 13,000 miles of track controlled by their companies. It was decided at this meeting to synchronize the changeover on all the lines. The dates chosen for the project were Monday, May 31 and Tuesday, June 1,1886.  

 During the four-month period between the beginning of February and the end of May 1886, part of the rolling stock of the roads was changed to the new gauge so that a supply of cars and motive power would be available when the track gauge was changed....Only one rail was moved, that rail being shoved inward three inches while the other rail was left undisturbed.  [Before the changeover day] each road assigned crews to smoothing ties and roadbed and to remove a number of spikes on the inside of the rail to be moved (remember no tie plates back then). Two-thirds of the inside ones on straight track and every other one on curved track were removed. Then, the distance that the rail was to be set over was measured and new inside spikes driven into every third tie along the new line.

  On the date of the changeover at least three workmen were assigned to each mile of track. As a result of the careful preparations, all that had to be done was to draw the few spikes that remained to hold the rail in its old position, shove the base of the rail under the spikes that had been driven on the inside of the new gauge, and drive in a minimum of spikes to secure the outside of the shifted rail. The remaining work was left to be finished after traffic had been resumed. 

An example of the speed with which the changeover was accomplished was the record of an L&N section gang who changed eleven miles of track in four and a half hours. On both days the work was completed between 3:30 AM and 4 PM during which time all train movements were suspended. When traffic was resumed after 4 PM on June 1, 1886, the American railroad system had become for the first time a physically integrated network."