I know there has been dual gauge track, how about triple gauge or even quad gauge?
I remember TRAINS had a photo a while back of, I believe it was triple track gauge…And the photo was at a switch too. Don’t remember just where it was located.
I recall a picture of such an installation in Cincinnati, ages ago. Perhaps Paul North can help us out here. As I remember, the road had “Georgetown” in its name.
Johnny
The only ‘conventional’* triple-gage installation that immediately comes to mind is a photo in Trains within the last 5 to 10 - OK, 17 - years of that configuration at a terminal in Australia, with baboons or monkeys standing by the tracks. See:
Farewell to triple-gauge track
Trains, May 1992 page 56
rationalization in Australia
( AUSTRALIA, “MCNAUGHT, REID”, TRN )
Otherwise, there must have been some in similar locations, but most of those are or would have been overseas, in places like India and Africa, and perhaps Japan, where systems with different gages converged. Perhaps it was more likely with trolley systems, where urban congestion and real estate scarcity and costs would place a premium on cooperation and multiple uses of the same rails and R-O-W.
Domestically, post-1890 or so - to exclude the slight variations on standard gage, particularly among the southern roads - I could see Georgetown, Colorado, but I don’t know what the 3rd gage would have been. Otherwise, I doubt if Georgetown, South Carolina, or Texas would have had it.
- Excluding the ‘live steam’ running tracks, where multiple gages are common in the interests of economy and space; test tracks, such as GE’s East Erie Commercial RR; shop facilities, steel mills, and the like, where short stretches might exist for service equipment; and the theoretical situations - such as when there’s a 3rd rail at 36" gage within at 56-1/2" gage track, there’s also by ‘default’ a very narrow gage track of about 18" created [56-1/2" - 36" - about 2-1/2" for the width of the
Didn’t (doesn’t) GE have such a test track at Erie?
Paul, this was Georgetown, Ohio–the seat of Brown county. As I recall, it was not a trunk line, but more of an interurban. And, at the latest, the picture was in an early fifties copy of Trains.
Did the railroad use baboons or monkeys as switchtenders?
Johnny
…Those sure are some wild track designs in the photos…
The photo that I mentioned before of being in TRAINS, surely wasn’t 17 years ago…I know time flies, but I really believe it was not nearly that far in the past. It was a photo taken looking at the 3 butt rails that moved sideways to perform the switching operation, etc…Butt ends similar as at a turntable.
On page 292 of “American Narrow Gauge Railroads” by George W. Hilton there is a picture of three gauge track in the Cincinnati, Georgetown and Portsmouth’s Canal Street Yard. The rails accomodate equipment for gauges 5’ 2 1/2", 4’ 8 1/2" and 3’. There are four rails.
From left to right I’ll call them rails 1, 2, 3 and 4.
Rail #1 is for 4’ 8 1/2" equipment only.
Rail #2 is for the 3’ and 5’ 2 1/2" equipment.
Rail #3 is for the 3’ and 4’ 8 1/2" equipment.
Rail #4 is for the 5’ 2 1/2" equipment only.
I make that to be 83" (6’ 11") between the outer rails
Another insteresting picture (which I can’t find right now to give a page reference) in Hilton’s great book shows a multi-gauge train on multi-gauge track. It shows the Rio Grande operating on dual gauge track with a narrow gauge Mike pulling both narrow and standard gauge cars. When you think of it, there would have been no problem doing this. But I’d like to have met the guy who figured out that just because you had equipment of two different gauges that needed to be moved, you didn’t need to run two seperate trains.
I remember seeing a case in Colorado, I believe. It was a rather odd example of a standard gauge and three foot narrow gauge installation along with a very narrow 24" or similar industrial installation that served a tie creosoting plant, if I remember correctly. No doubt, such things were rare and of very limited size, but they did exist for sure.
We had triple gauge track in South Australia, 5 3", 4’ 81/2", 3’ 6" in a couple of places in the north of the state, there is a picture located here,
The photo is not mine,
Trev
Boyd - I don’t know how to post on this forum, so am replying to your triple gauge track question. Maybe you could pass this on to the other postees??
To my knowledge, and as several other folks indicated in their posts, several American steel mills had triple gauge track (the Homestead Pa. mill where I worked had some standard/narrow dual-gauge track in a section of its structural mill called the “Lower Beam”. We - the Union RR - spotted empty mill gons in this Lower Beam mill & pulled the loads using the standard gauge track, while the in-plant narrow gauge in this area was used by US Steel to move rolls to be put into the mills rolling “stands”.)
More specifically regarding triple-gauge track, I seem to recall seeing some in a picture in a 10- to 15-year old copy of Rails Northeast magazine. Shot was of Bethlehem Steel’s namesake mill in Bethlehem, Pa. The “middle” gauge was standard for gons & hoppers, etc., the narrow gauge was used for roll movements similar to Homestead’s discussed above, and the wide gauge was electrified (high 3rd rail, I think) & used by Bethlehem to shuttle iron ore along the edge of one/some of their ore storage “piles” next to their blast furnaces.
Hope this helps…urrSam
modelcar - I have never seen any multi-gauge stub switches, in pix or on the ground. However, I HAVE seen, and actually thrown, a 3-WAY stub switch that to my knowledge is still run over at least weekly at the East Broad Top RR in central Pennsylvania (of course only thet’re operating in the summer tourist season). The EBTRR is a narrow-gauge Mikado steam operation . If you’d like, I have a picture I took of the switch & can email it to you if you give me your email (mine is sbradyr513@aol.com).
First - [#welcome], urrSam !
Might that magazine have been “RailPace” ? There was a long article in it about the Beth Steel Plant around that long ago. As I recall, the ore car had a monstrously wide gage - at least 7 ft., and maybe something really wild like 12 or 14 ft. It looked like a barge on rails. That kind of operation was oddball and limited enough and not generally visible to the public, which is one reason why I didn’t mention it in my earlier posts. I may very well have that issue someplace - I’ll see if I can retrieve it sometime over the next week or so.
- Paul North.
I visited the GE Erie plant in 1969 (job interview). I distinctly remember a multi-gauge track of at least three gauges. There may have been more. I don’t know if it is still there or not. I didn’t get the job.
I didn’t have anything with me to measure just what each of these gauges was:
MANY years ago I saw triple guage track work in the turnouts outside the Carrolton Street Car Barn in New Orleans. Only the broad guage track was left, but for many years the barn also served standard and narrow guage streetcar lines. The narrow rails were removed, but the multi guage frogs and other castings were left in the street. One of the improvements made after the RTA took over from NOPSI (the power company) was to repave the street with concrete, replacing all of the embeded rail, including those frogs. It’s only single guage now, but still interesting track work.
Phil
Cincinnati had wide-gauge streetcars, a wide-gauge interuruban, and a standard gauge interuban, and a narrow gauge steam railroad also owned by one of the interurbans. There was a yard where they all met. About 60 years ago Railroad Magazine had a true story located there.
Triple gauge, yes. There was some triple gauge track in Pennsylvania between Carbondale and Scranton. The three gauges were: the D&H gravity railroad at 4’3"; The D&H standard gauge main ; and the Erie’s 6’0" gauge track. For reference, there is a picture on page 62 of Jim Shaughnessy’s book on the Delaware and Hudson.
Boyd - thanx for the welcome! I’m afraid I haven’t been checking this forum in the last week or so. In any case, you’re right - good memory - RailPace was the mag, and I’ve found my copy of the March ‘94 issue with the Bethlehem Steel article. Unfortunately I was incorrect about this plant having any triple-gauge track - it had dual guage (standard & 3-foot), plus the7’-10" electrified blast furnace raw material operation. It does look like the latter might have been dual gauge with wide plus standard, (and this would make sense in that it would allow spotting of standard-gauge raw material cars if the electric system was shut down for some reason) but I really can’t tell from the picture. If you run across you’re copy, let me know what you think about this.
Regards - Sam