Broad gauge -v- Standard gauge

[krus_aragon]

Did he ? Fairlie locomotives were built for standard gauge as well

Yes, his second-ever Fairlie (the standard gauge Mountaineer) trundled through my hometown in the mid 1860s. But after his success with the Ffestiniog, he seems to have become an ardent advocate of narrow gauge lines (which most of his Fairlies were built for).

In addition to the article I linked to earlier, he read a paper on railway gauges in Edinburgh in 1871. He was certainly a leading advocate of the narrow gauge in the 1870s.

 

[edwin_m]

Isn't his assertion that narrow gauge doesn't require bogies rather contradicted by his promotion of his bogied locomotive design?

 

[krus_aragon]

Isn't his assertion that narrow gauge doesn't require bogies rather contradicted by his promotion of his bogied locomotive design?

I'm going from memory here, but he was concentrating on the added expense of bogies on all the coaching stock in order to make a smooth ride (which he asserted was not needed on a narrower gauge). I'm sure he would have pointed out that a bogied narrow gauge locomotive allowed for a larger locomotive than would otherwise be possible. He certainly made some points along the lines of allowing the firebox to be wider than the wheelbase.

Further than that, I'm afraid I'll have to suggest you have a browse of his own words. (I didn't mean to assert that everything he says is true, just that these are arguments he made. There were many that argued against him, even at the time. Unsurprisingly, he also published a booklet of articles that spoke favourably of his ideas.)

 

[Bevan Price]

Because the dominant height feature then was the chimney of the locomotive. If Brunel wanted a tall chimney for draughting purposes on top of a big boiler, on top of the axle of big driving wheels (Brunel favoured single drivers with large wheels) that would drive the height specification.

OT on this topic, but chimney height appears to have been neglected in a well-known painting of Rocket passing under a bridge at Rainhill. See one of the images on this page:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Stephenson's+Rocket+painting+rainhill&biw=1280&bih=622&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=a7nIYp24ZT9aXM%3A%2CZobnsQVVbHjpGM%2C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kSGVX20r4V_TArRvfeKF1GFGCxcWg&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiRnPOW6q_kAhWtQhUIHTECCnEQ9QEwAHoECAIQBg#imgrc=_&vet=1

If it had been a true likeness, the bridge would have removed several feet from the chimney.

Back to the main topic - Brunel - although a fine engineer - seems to have been someone who thought that he was always right, so everybody else must be wrong. In this case, he got things wrong because he failed to appreciate the need for easy connectivity between railway systems. Trans-shipment of freight (and passengers) at breaks of gauge was always going to be inconvenient, cause delays, and often be expensive.

If Broad Gauge had been chosen as a universal requirement, hundreds of miles of standard gauge railway would have needed to be rebuilt. Wider bridges; rebuilt stations; more land purchased, etc. That would have been difficult, and hideously expensive - and never acceptable to the "money" people. The only way for a broad gauge national railway system to have been adopted might be if Brunel had come before Stephenson.......

 

[bassmike]

Track gauge has nothing to do with rolling stock dimensions - look at the locos and trains in South Africa, larger than anything in Britain but on 3'6" gauge. Or the vast double-stacks in the USA, way beyond what old Hastings Size rolling stock was restricted to in Britain, but on the same gauge tracks.

The BART trains in San Francisco had every design aspect in the 1960s gone into by "experts", so they ended up with non-standard 5'6" track gauge, cars no larger than the rest of the USA because the air resistance expert pointed to minimising piston pressure effect in the tunnels, and the inability to be able to use any of the standardised track maintenance equipment from the various US contractors, so they have to buy their own specialist kit for everything. They really regret going for a silly gauge.

I believe that Toronto used 5ft gauge for it's first metro, but reverted to standard afterwards.

 

[krus_aragon]

I believe that Toronto used 5ft gauge for it's first metro, but reverted to standard afterwards.

Toronto still uses 1495mm (4ft 10 7/8in) for its streetcars, as well as its subway system!

 

[edwin_m]

Barcelona Metro* has lines of Spanish broad gauge, standard gauge and metre.

*strictly speaking the metre gauge ones are FGC suburban lines, but they are pretty much metro in the city centre.

 

[Taunton]

I believe that Toronto used 5ft gauge for it's first metro, but reverted to standard afterwards.

Toronto uses its traditional streetcar gauge for the TTC Subway. The whole thing is interconnected, and indeed once had trains through-routed all around (the old interconnection tunnels remain). It also initially used converted streetcars for works cars on the Subway. Like a number of cases elsewhere it was done by the city authorities deliberately to stop main line railway wagons getting onto the streets.

The classic example of doing it deliberately is Russia. When the first railway there was devised in 1835-40, which was the still-current St Petersburg to Moscow line, Czar Nikolai I took a personal interest and sent engineers to Western Europe to observe and learn. They reported back that there was a strong move to use standard gauge to allow extensive through running. Nikolai I had been a junior army officer when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, and felt that facilitating that was definitely undesirable, so choose a different gauge to prevent it. Hence Russian 5 foot gauge. It was a nuisance for 100 years, but absolutely thwarted much of the German invasion in 1941-44 over ground with roads impassable in winter snow or spring mud. The additional 4 inches had been chosen as a nuisance difference, more than just reprofiling the wheel tyres could achieve but not enough that wheels could be mounted outside instead of inside the frames.

 

[krus_aragon]

The whole thing is interconnected, and indeed once had trains through-routed all around (the old interconnection tunnels remain).

This summer, I had the pleasure of explaining the interlining trial to my Mother, who lived in Toronto at the time, but had no memory of it. (In fairness, she was still in school at the time.)

Like a number of cases elsewhere it was done by the city authorities deliberately to stop main line railway wagons getting onto the streets.

That's one popular interpretation. Another is that the first Street Railway (in 1861) was required to let street wagons use their rails, and a rail gauge was chosen to suit both flanged streetcars (on the outside of the rail) and the existing flangeless wagons (on the inside). See the Transit Toronto FAQ for more details.

 

[Indigo Soup]

I read a story (sorry, can't find a ref) that Stevenson was asked in later years if he wished he had built his railways to a larger track gauge. He replied "Perhaps a little larger". I guess he might have been thinking of 5'6", or at least 5'.

The line as I recall is that Stevenson would have chosen a gauge 'a few inches larger - but only a very few'. It's also worth noting that the Union Pacific Railroad was originally given a free choice of gauge, and settled upon 5' as preferable before the advantages of through running prevailed.

There again, the Texas & Pacific was originally to be a 3'6" gauge line, so who knows.

 

[Taunton]

It's also worth noting that the Union Pacific Railroad was originally given a free choice of gauge, and settled upon 5' as preferable before the advantages of through running prevailed.

5'0" was quite a common gauge, especially in The South of the USA, leading up to the Civil War, and became known as the "Confederate Gauge". It was after the war, where both sides had been thwarted by gauge issues, that it was standardised.

The "Great Locomotive Chase", part of American folklore, where Confederates stole a loco and ran from Atlanta to Chattanooga wrecking the railway along the way, was on the 5'0".

 

[Indigo Soup]

5'0" was quite a common gauge, especially in The South of the USA, leading up to the Civil War, and became known as the "Confederate Gauge". It was after the war, where both sides had been thwarted by gauge issues, that it was standardised.

The United States had quite the proliferation of gauges, in fact - the Erie Railroad had a 6-foot gauge at first, on similar grounds to Brunel and the 7' gauge; there was a fairly extensive system on 5'6" gauge in Maine, to join up with Canada where it was mandated by law; and 4'10" was used in Ohio just for a bit of variety.

Even after standardisation of gauge, the Pennsylvania Railroad maintained 4'9" track gauge on its' goods-only lines, despite the rolling stock (and passenger lines) being 4'8.5" gauge. I assume this was to help with curvature.

 

[d9009alycidon]

There were Uk variations as well, the small but well established network in Central Scotland to the East Of Glasgow was entirely laid out to 4ft 6in "Scotch Gauge", and was converted to standard gauge over a two month period in 1847. On the myth of how the gauge was established, the wheel spacing would not have been the root of the dimension. Most carthorses had a basically similar width of "rump" and the shafts therfore had to be built to a similar spacing to suit, therefore the wheels would also be similarly spaced

 

[Calthrop]

5'0" was quite a common gauge, especially in The South of the USA, leading up to the Civil War, and became known as the "Confederate Gauge". It was after the war, where both sides had been thwarted by gauge issues, that it was standardised.

Said standardisation being carried out in two days' intensive work, over all of the Southern 5'0" gauge system: May 31st and June 1st 1886. I started a thread about that feat, a couple of years ago:

railforums.co.uk/threads/the-usas-great-gauge-change-or-gwr-1892-eat-your-heart-out.141167/#post-2862222

(I'm no good with links -- hoped that the above would function as one, but seemingly no luck. Anyway, it gives the title of my thread: in "International Transport", commencing 27 / 1 / 2017.)

In what were the Confederate States in the Civil War, 5'0" was the commonest gauge, but not the only one, and definitely not in a "seamless" way; IIRC North Carolina was, contrarily, virtually all four-feet-eight-and-a-half. The "gauge mess" in the Confederacy considerably hampered its war effort, or so I understand; it would seem that the Union coped better with its equivalent problems.

The United States had quite the proliferation of gauges, in fact - the Erie Railroad had a 6-foot gauge at first, on similar grounds to Brunel and the 7' gauge; there was a fairly extensive system on 5'6" gauge in Maine, to join up with Canada where it was mandated by law; and 4'10" was used in Ohio just for a bit of variety.

Even after standardisation of gauge, the Pennsylvania Railroad maintained 4'9" track gauge on its' goods-only lines, despite the rolling stock (and passenger lines) being 4'8.5" gauge. I assume this was to help with curvature.

An interesting survival of 5'0" gauge in the Americas was on the Panama Railway, parallel to and long antedating the Canal. The PR, promoted by US interests and finance and opened in 1855, was 5'0" gauge from opening, until conversion to four-feet-eight-and-a-half in 2001.

 

[Cowley]

Said standardisation being carried out in two days' intensive work, over all of the Southern 5'0" gauge system: May 31st and June 1st 1886. I started a thread about that feat, a couple of years ago:

railforums.co.uk/threads/the-usas-great-gauge-change-or-gwr-1892-eat-your-heart-out.141167/#post-2862222

(I'm no good with links -- hoped that the above would function as one, but seemingly no luck. Anyway, it gives the title of my thread: in "International Transport", commencing 27 / 1 / 2017.)

In what were the Confederate States in the Civil War, 5'0" was the commonest gauge, but not the only one, and definitely not in a "seamless" way; IIRC North Carolina was, contrarily, virtually all four-feet-eight-and-a-half. The "gauge mess" in the Confederacy considerably hampered its war effort, or so I understand; it would seem that the Union coped better with its equivalent problems.



An interesting survival of 5'0" gauge in the Americas was on the Panama Railway, parallel to and long antedating the Canal. The PR, promoted by US interests and finance and opened in 1855, was 5'0" gauge from opening, until conversion to four-feet-eight-and-a-half in 2001.

Here’s that thread good sir.

https://www.railforums.co.uk/thread...change-or-gwr-1892-eat-your-heart-out.141167/

 

[Calthrop]

@Cowley -- many thanks. While I find that these machines provide endless interest and entertainment; a great deal of the whole business with them might as well, to me, be black magic .

 

[krus_aragon]

@Cowley -- many thanks. While I find that these machines provide endless interest and entertainment; a great deal of the whole business with them might as well, to me, be black magic .

Sometimes the forum software can identify a URL (web address) that's been pasted into a message, and will turn it into a link. It tends to do better if you make sure you include the "www." and/or the "https://" prefix. (Some web browsers hide these from view by default these days, which doesn't help.)

 

[Cowley]

@Cowley -- many thanks. While I find that these machines provide endless interest and entertainment; a great deal of the whole business with them might as well, to me, be black magic .

No problem. It’s quite easy on the phone because I just press for a few seconds on the screen like a heavy handed chimp and it says “Copy”, then I just do the same again where I want it and it says “Paste”.
(I only learnt how to do this recently and I literally felt like a technology god when it worked for the first time...)

Anyway, that thread was interesting and I’d forgotten about it, so I quite enjoyed reading through it again before I linked it.

 

[Calthrop]

Thanks, gentlemen, for guidance !

 

[Lucan]

The "Great Locomotive Chase", part of American folklore, where Confederates stole a loco and ran from Atlanta to Chattanooga wrecking the railway along the way, was on the 5'0".

Wrong way round. Union raiders stole the loco from the Confederates - Atlanta is deep in the Southern states. The eponymous film is one of my favourites; You are supposed to be on the Union side but I find I am on the Confederates as I hate seeing the destruction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Locomotive_Chase

 

[Calthrop]

The eponymous film is one of my favourites; You are supposed to be on the Union side but I find I am on the Confederates as I hate seeing the destruction.

"People like us" can find ourselves getting unintended messages from works of art which involve "railways and conflict". The school which I attended; regularly showed, several times in the winter and spring terms, assorted film classics (turning up and watching, was compulsory) -- in my early years there, several cinematic masterpieces went right over my eleven- or twelve-year-old head: points thoroughly failed to be got. One such was The Bridge on the River Kwai. As at circa 1960, the part of World War II featuring Japan was pretty much off my radar -- I'd imagined that unpleasantness to be exclusively about "us and Germany". My most pronounced reaction to the film, was to be charmed by the railway and steam-loco element in it (the film's makers in fact employed for the purpose, a disused section of 2'6" gauge in Sri Lanka, in those days Ceylon): I felt that no country whose war effort involved such a sweet little railway, could be all bad; and I was truly upset at the denouement, with the bridge being in spite of everything, blown up as the train was crossing it.

 

[Lucan]

Taking as a given that a somewhat wider track gauge would be better (even George Stevenson later thought so), and that 5ft or 5ft 6ins or even 6ft would have been a practicable standard even back in the 1840s, it is unfortunate that with timber sleepers it is much easier to reduce an existing gauge than it is to increase it, because the sleepers don't need replacing. Hence railways around the world with broader gauges (like the 5ft in the southern states of the USA) in time got reduced to 4ft 8.5in as the lowest common denominator. Meanwhile the gauges less than that, such as South Africa's, tended to survive because of the expense of increasing them.

 

[PartyOperator]

The fact that new high-speed lines in places with existing broader gauges tend to select standard gauge would suggest that the benefits of using standardised technology and allowing access to other networks outweigh the advantages. Even India plans to use standard gauge for new-build high-speed lines, despite having a very large 5ft6 network and minimal opportunity for trains to go beyond the Subcontinent.

 

[Calthrop]

"Four-eight-and-a-half" as the lowest common denominator -- or sometimes, just because of how things pan out? Being fond of "what-ifs", I wonder how things would be in Australia nowadays, if the chaotic situation in the earliest days of railways there, had been less chaotic -- leading as it did, to Australian railways long being a patchwork of 5'3", four-eight-and-a-half, and 3'6"; largely but not entirely, divided up according to State. (The old foolishness with "it was all going to be standard four-eight-and-a-half, then New South Wales switched to 5'3", Victoria / South Aus. altered their gauge to match, then NSW reverted to standard gauge; the southern States said "stuff this", and stayed on 5'3".)

In "real history", NSW kept four-feet-eight-and-a-half; the Commonwealth Railways' link between South and Western Australia was opened in 1917 as a four-eight-and-a-half line (isolated gauge-wise, linking with 3/6" gauge lines at either end). Gradual standardisation on four-feet-eight-and-a-half, mostly in relatively recent decades, has resulted in four-eight-and-a-half all the way from Brisbane to Perth, and from south to north via Alice Springs; and if I'm right, the majority of lines in Victoria and South Australia now altered from their former gauges, to four-eight-and-a-half. Had the systems of NSW / Victoria / South Australia always been, effectively from the first, 5'3" gauge, with four-eight-and-a-half unknown in 19th-century Australia -- one would at least suspect that the 1917 Commonwealth Trans-Australian line would have been built to 5'3" gauge, with view likely eventual standardisation on that gauge nationwide -- with today, 5'3" occupying the position in Australia which four-eight-and-a-half in reality now does; and as "for real", 3'6" relegated to serving what one might call -- meaning no offence -- marginal areas.

 

[Calthrop]

The fact that new high-speed lines in places with existing broader gauges tend to select standard gauge would suggest that the benefits of using standardised technology and allowing access to other networks outweigh the advantages. Even India plans to use standard gauge for new-build high-speed lines, despite having a very large 5ft6 network and minimal opportunity for trains to go beyond the Subcontinent.

@PartyOperator -- you "pipped me at the post" with this one -- would be ready to concur with you: if a 5'3" gauge Australia were now looking at new high-speed lines...

My bolding of yours: there is now, of course, actually a notionally functional rail route throughout, between Europe (eastern and western) and the Subcontinent -- with the link completed relatively recently, between Zahedan and the rest of Iran's rail system. Given a future in which people manage, somehow, to become more sensible about international affairs: great things might be done. As they say, "there's no harm in hoping".

 

[edwin_m]

Japan went for standard gauge for the Shinkansen despite their entire existing network being narrow gauge and no credible prospect of connecting to any other country. Perhaps motivated by export potential?

The standard gauge allows trains to go as fast as the technology allows, limited by aerodynamics and other factors that don't depend on track gauge. America and elsewhere show that it can handle all but the most extreme loads (and could perhaps have had even bigger structure gauges if anyone had wanted to pay for them). A broader gauge wouldn't have been any faster or allowed any bigger load that anybody actually wanted to transport in quantity. But it would have been less versatile particularly in curve radius, which might not matter on high speed or other main lines but would prevent through running if other routes adopted a narrow gauge to save money. The almost universal fate of narrow-gauge feeder lines to standard gauge routes would have been shared by standard-gauge feeders to broad-gauge routes.

So I don't think the case is made that the railways would have been better to adopt a broader gauge.

 

[Taunton]

Meanwhile the gauges less than that, such as South Africa's, tended to survive because of the expense of increasing them.

Sakhalin, taken over from Japan by the Soviet Union in 1945, had an extensive Japanese 3'6" system, and the Soviets keenly converted the rest of their absorbed territory to standard Soviet 5' 0" gauge, but Sakhalin was not only left as it was, but significantly extended, giving nowadays a little-known Russian narrow gauge system.

 

[Calthrop]

Sakhalin, taken over from Japan by the Soviet Union in 1945, had an extensive Japanese 3'6" system, and the Soviets keenly converted the rest of their absorbed territory to standard Soviet 5' 0" gauge, but Sakhalin was not only left as it was, but significantly extended, giving nowadays a little-known Russian narrow gauge system.

Sorry for membership here, in the nitpicker-and-killjoy squad: but in recent years, Sakhalin's rail system has been converted bit-by-bit, from 3' 6" to Russian standard 5' 0" -- according to Wiki, this task was announced as "formally" completed very recently: August 2019. A factor in this gauge conversion, it is gathered: plans for taking the step (long contemplated) of linking the Sakhalin system with that of mainland Russia, via a bridge over the decidedly narrow, narrowest part of the strait which separates Sakhalin from the Eurasian mainland. This would involve the additional task of new-building of a couple of hundred kilometres of line on the mainland, from the current nearest point on the rail system there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakhalin_Railway