Curvature in different places

[Huntergreed]

I have noticed whenever I have travelled on the WCML that the track always seems curvier up north and straighter down south. Is there a reason for this? The stations down south are often on very long straights and there is more 125mph running track down south too...

 

[kjhskj75]

I have noticed whenever I have travelled on the WCML that the track always seems curvier up north and straighter down south. Is there a reason for this? The stations down south are often on very long straights and there is more 125mph running track down south too...

Basically because the south is flat and the north isn't.

 

[SeanG]

I have noticed whenever I have travelled on the WCML that the track always seems curvier up north and straighter down south. Is there a reason for this? The stations down south are often on very long straights and there is more 125mph running track down south too...

Presumably as there are bigger hills up north

 

[ffm]

An OS map is quite useful -showing that the railways are more curved where the land is hilly, as the lines follow the contours to keep as level as possible. In the Midlands and sarf east (in particular) there are less of them thar hills. Actually I nearly ignored this thread as a joke, maybe it is? Surely few, if any, people are quire this thick?

 

[Deepgreen]

Basically because the south is flat and the north isn't.

And the 'ills are 'arder to tunnel through!

 

[Railsigns]

The Straight Track Tax applies once you get north of Lancaster.

 

[furnessvale]

The Straight Track Tax applies once you get north of Lancaster.

Good job 96% of the route north of Carnforth is curved. Saves a fortune!

 

[swt_passenger]

They started off with an accidental over-estimate of the end to end length of track required, so in order to use it all up, the further north they went the more they had to deviate from the straight line.

Obviously, if they had started in Scotland the bendy part would have been in the south...

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Surely few, if any, people are quire this thick?

The last time that I saw the word "quire" in print, it was to state that it was a one-twentieth part of a ream of paper....
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Basically because the south is flat and the north isn't.

I thought that only referred to the beer served....

 

[6Gman]

It's more Southern bias I'm afraid.

They used all the straight pieces of track down south, leaving us in the north having to use up all the curved pieces.

Plus, how would Pacers 'sing' if all our track was straight?

 

[QueensCurve]

I have noticed whenever I have travelled on the WCML that the track always seems curvier up north and straighter down south. Is there a reason for this? The stations down south are often on very long straights and there is more 125mph running track down south too...

Trying to give a serious answer.

By 1840 the line from Euston to Lancaster was completed ans the Caledonian route linked Carlisle to Glasgow leaving a gap to be filled by the Lancaster and Carlisle Railway and which needed to to cross some of the most demanding terrain in England.

Going through uplands either requires tunnels and other earthworks to level the route or following the contours.

The original route proposed was around the coast but would be too costly. Our very own Joseph Locke was engaged to engineer a route via Penrith.

Locke had I believe proposed a summit tunnel for Shap, but this was refused by the Lancaster and Carlisle Board on grounds of cost. This forced Locke to take the climb over the moors of Shap fell with a gradient of 1:75.

Similar problems had to be faced further North on the Caledonian between Beattock and the summit to the north.

Hence the convoluted routes followed.

 

[Joseph_Locke]

I hate tunnels and refuse to build them. Preston Brook was a bad day.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I hate tunnels and refuse to build them. Preston Brook was a bad day.

Wasn't Woodhead one of yours?
Maybe you just finished what Charles Vignoles had begun.

 

[QueensCurve]

I hate tunnels and refuse to build them. Preston Brook was a bad day.

It serves as a visible boundary between Mk1 and Mk3 OHLE.

 

[ac6000cw]

It could summed up by saying 'it's geography versus money' - you can make a railway line as flat and straight as you want *if* you have enough money to pay for the civil engineering to do it in hilly terrain (deep cuttings, tall embankments, long viaducts, long tunnels etc.).

Using the WCML as an example, the more favourable terrain 'down south' (combined with an easy sell to investors of lines linking the major cities of London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool) meant that the London & Birmingham and the Grand Junction (Birmingham to the middle of the Liverpool and Manchester line) railways were built from the start as serious, fairly straight and flat, mainlines. North of Preston the potential traffic prospects were less and the terrain more difficult, so the available money from investors wouldn't stretch to building heroic, expensive, earthworks and structures etc. - they just exchanged curvature and gradients for lower construction costs.

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If you want an extreme example of the 'money versus terrain' problem, take a look at the building of the original Canadian Pacific transcontinental route across Canada in the 1880s. A major reason why it was built was because the population British Columbia threatened to join the US federation instead of Canada unless they got a transport link to the eastern part of Canada.

To head off possible incursions from the US, they wanted to build it as far south as possible, but that meant tackling the Selkirk Mountains head-on (and Canada was a pretty impoverished country at the time). It ended up with very steep gradients (4% over Kicking Horse pass, plus using switchbacks to gain height), some massive bridges built entirely out of wood, and tight curves all over the place. A fabulously scenic railway that fufilled the brief but an expensive operating nightmare, the mountainous parts of which have been re-aligned and rebuilt at great cost over the subsequent years (and it's still a slow route). When they started building west from Calgary and east from Vancouver, they didn't even know if there *was* a usable pass through the mountains - almost at the last minute, Major A.B. Rogers found the pass that bears his name today - talk about heroic adventures...

 

[snowball]

When they started building west from Calgary and east from Vancouver, they didn't even know if there *was* a usable pass through the mountains - almost at the last minute, Colonel Rogers found the pass that bears his name today - talk about heroic adventures...

After reading this I tried googling Colonel Rogers. It led me to a Wikipedia page about Colonel Robert Rogers, an American colonial frontiersman - right continent, wrong century. He died in 1795, a bit early for railways. Further investigation showed I should have been looking for Major Albert Bowman Rogers. He too was American, not Canadian.

 

[ac6000cw]

After reading this I tried googling Colonel Rogers. It led me to a Wikipedia page about Colonel Robert Rogers, an American colonial frontiersman - right continent, wrong century. He died in 1795, a bit early for railways. Further investigation showed I should have been looking for Major Albert Bowman Rogers. He too was American, not Canadian.

Oops - I was writing it from (incorrect) memory - I've fixed the original post...

Closer to home, the narrow-gauge lines in Central Wales are another illustration of low construction costs versus steep gradients and sharp curves (when loaded trains always went downhill to the sea, the gradients helped rather than hindered operation - provided the brakes worked!).

 

[najaB]

...when loaded trains always went downhill to the sea, the gradients helped rather than hindered operation - provided the brakes worked!

When the brakes didn't work it helped the operation, but hindered reuse!

 

[QueensCurve]

North of Preston the potential traffic prospects were less and the terrain more difficult, so the available money from investors wouldn't stretch to building heroic, expensive, earthworks and structures etc.

Even the stretch from Preston to Lancaster is relatively straight and level. The last bit into Lancaster bends because the original station was further east than Lancaster Castle which was the terminus of the Lancaster and Carlisle.

There is also a relatively straight/level stretch near Lockerbie.
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When the brakes didn't work it helped the operation, but hindered reuse!

As illustrated in Carlisle in 1984.

 

[edwin_m]

Even the stretch from Preston to Lancaster is relatively straight and level. The last bit into Lancaster bends because the original station was further east than Lancaster Castle which was the terminus of the Lancaster and Carlisle.

There is also a relatively straight/level stretch near Lockerbie.

And another one northwards out of Carlisle as well as various shorter ones along the route, but these are the few areas where the surroundings aren't hilly.

 

[Johnuk123]

Is this thread supposed to be serious.
I might start one asking why the railway in the fens doesn't as have many gradients as the S&C.

 

[randyrippley]

Even the stretch from Preston to Lancaster is relatively straight and level. The last bit into Lancaster bends because the original station was further east than Lancaster Castle which was the terminus of the Lancaster and Carlisle.

There is also a relatively straight/level stretch near Lockerbie.

The straight bit south of Lancaster is at the edge of the Fylde- drained coastal bogland, with a sea-level coastal stretch north of Lancaster through Carnforth, more flat bogland around Hincaster until the route joins the Kent river valley and starts winding and climbing to Oxenholme. After Oxenholme it crosses to the River Lune gorge and starts climbing even more.
On the flatlands the railway could go anywhere -as long as foundations could be sunk into the Fylde/Morecambe Bay boglands. In the valleys the line had to follow the existing rivers.

 

[GrimsbyPacer]

Is this thread supposed to be serious.
I might start one asking why the railway in the fens doesn't as have many gradients as the S&C.

I always wondered why they aren't gradients, even the mighty Shippea Hill isn't very steep.

 

[Ships]

I hate tunnels and refuse to build them. Preston Brook was a bad day.

And is still providing head aches today

 

[61653 HTAFC]

The curvature of the Northern end of the West Coast is due to the strong ales provided to the navvies building it...

 

[philthetube]

It is not such a stupid question, as mentioned hills is the obvious reason, but cost is also relevant.

I wonder if technology is also relevant, what could be built as railway building knowledge improved, because of experience.

Not really on topic but probably of interest to some the Leeds and Liverpool canal demonstrates this phenomenon, between Skipton and Gargrave it follows the valley sides probably doing four times the distance a crow would, by the time it reaches Burnley a similar issue is dealt with by a long embankment.

I knew my school geography lessons would come in some time.

 

[ac6000cw]

It is not such a stupid question, as mentioned hills is the obvious reason, but cost is also relevant.

I wonder if technology is also relevant, what could be built as railway building knowledge improved, because of experience.

Not really on topic but probably of interest to some the Leeds and Liverpool canal demonstrates this phenomenon, between Skipton and Gargrave it follows the valley sides probably doing four times the distance a crow would, by the time it reaches Burnley a similar issue is dealt with by a long embankment.

I knew my school geography lessons would come in some time.

A perfect illustration of this is the new Gotthard base tunnel in Switzerland - this bypasses many miles of steeply graded and twisty line (including seven horseshoe or 'spiral' curves and a 9.3 mile long summit tunnel) with a 'straight shot' from Erstfeld to Bodio. In the summer I walked from Goschenen down the valley to Gurtnellen - at Wassen you can look in wonder at the same railway on three different levels as it doubles back on itself twice to gain height. When it was built in the 1870s that was cutting edge railway building - digging a 35 mile tunnel through solid hard rock was dreamland stuff back then. Building the original Gotthard summit tunnel was heroic enough (and that took 10 years and cost 200 construction workers their lives). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_railway