Hi all,
Having recently moved house, I also had to change commuter lines. There is a facility on the new line that caught my attention - a dual-gauge intermodal terminal. I’m wondering if anyone’s heard of a facility similar to this existing in the USA, or is it something found only in Australia?
Oh, and it was on the Queensland Rail dual-gauge line down to Sydney that I saw this - so it’s actually coming off the narrow-gauge railroad.
Cheers,
tbdanny
Welcome. There are no dual gauge intermodal ternimals in North American. We only have the one gauge.
Try Brazil, they have several dual gauge railroads.
Never been on the docks at Skagway AK or at Antonito CO?
Standard Gauge in the USA is 4ft 8in. Intermodal trains only travel on standard gauge in the United States. Now whether they still transfer cargo between boxcars on different gauged rail lines I don’t know. I think the only narrow gauged railroads left in America are tourist lines. Course narrow gauge maybe more common down in Mexico.
From what I hear has a pretty good rail network. Is freight rail more popular down there? For example could you walk into a school and ask the question; how does freight moves in the country and would actually have kids include railroads in their answers and not just think freight is only moved by trucks and planes like here in the United States.
Related to another thread, perhaps this is one of the challenges for US railroads, namely , that the perception of many in the US is that railroads are an anachronism. Freight service is great, but only where it goes. Many see US rails as an industry in decline because of abandonment and tearing up tracks in the past and miserable passenger service now except on the coasts and in some metro areas. To a lot of young people, railroads are irrelevant, hence they look at you like you’re nuts if you suggest to them a career in the rail industry (I’ve tried this with some of my students in the past). Perhaps those industry folks in this forum are too close to see the bigger picture, but I believe many of those of us outside see and hear this. Maybe this sounds harsh and will be met with “you don’t know what you’re talking about” and defensive sarcasm. I only say it because as a lifelong railfan, I care.
Why does Skagway have any standard gauge trackage? Did they used to bring in standard gauge freight cars and transload them to White Pass & Yukon 3 footer rolling stock? WP & Y has no connection with the rest of the North American rail network nor with the Alaska RR…
Not to steal mc’s ‘thunder’ here, but . . . WP&Y was one of the first users of containers other than Sea-Land - chiefly as a means for its survival, and often for the unusual load of outbound ore. However, I believe they were not the standard ISO size of 8 ft. x 8 ft. x 20 ft. I might be wrong about that, though . . . [%-)] See -
Integration in the north
Trains, July 1971 page 36
How White Pass & Yukon, Alaska, and CN-Newfoundland interchange
( ARR, CNR, CONTAINER, FERRY, “HILTON, GEORGE W.”, WP&Y, TRN )
Yes, QR does have a pretty good rail network - I believe it holds the record for world’s largest narrow-gauge system, and also for the world’s fastest narrow-gauge train (the Tilt Train).
And with regards to the awareness of freight traffic, I would say that there is more awareness of it. Outside of the Citytrain (commuter) network in South-East Queensland and long distance passenger service, the majority of QR’s traffic is freight. There are towns up north, such as Rockhampton and Townsville, where the line runs straight through the middle of town - even some street running in Rocky.
What also contributes to the awareness is that with the exception of the Gold Coast line (a commuter-only extension of the Beenleigh line), all the Citytrain lines also carry freight AFAIK. This is especially true on the Ipswich/Caboolture line, which forms part of the main North/South freight corridor. This means that kids are exposed to freight traffic on a regular basis, either catching it to school or stuck in a car with their parents waiting for it to go past at level crossings.
So in a word, yes.
One thing to (I hope) clarify a little…since Australia started as a group of disconnected colonies that eventually grew together, they have/had railways of three different gauges in different parts of the country…
Broad gauge: 5’-3"
Standard gauge: 4’-8 1/2"
Narrow gauge: 3’-6"
We had something a little bit like that in America before the Civil War, particularly in the South, but except for a few places where narrow gauge lines were required because of the terrain (like the Colorado Rockies) most post-war US lines were either built to standard gauge (like the Transcontinental RR, which was required by Congress to be standard gauge) or converted to it.
I thought the northern and southern states had their own separate but standard gauges. What happened when the Union army (northern states) conquered more ground? did they instantly upgrade the track gauge as they went along?
Wasn’t the union’s secured victory the fact that the Battle of Atlanta took out the south’s major railroad hub?
Didn’t Pacific Electric and Los Angeles trolleys share some common right of ways in downtown LA ? The LA system was not standard gauge.
Yes, this caused all sorts of problems - I remember seeing a chap in a documentary talking about what it was like at the New South Wales/Queensland border at the break of gauge, before the dual gauge was built. Passengers, freight, everything needed to be transloaded - and this was in the days before intermodal.
Another oddity I’ve seen - this time in photos only - is triple-gauge trackage at the junction where the states of South Australia (narrow gauge), New South Wales (standard gauge) and Victoria (broad gauge) share a border. Looks like it would be a nightmare to model, but impressive if you could pull it off.
I do not recall any account of re-gauging the track; if the track were re-gauged, it would have been impossible to easily use captured locomotives and rolling stock. In some places, the Union soldiers pulled rails up, heated them in the middle, and bent them around trees or stumps.
The Montgomery & West Point (later, Western Railway of Alabama), unlike the majority of southern roads, was built to what we know as standard gauge.
Johnny
Well, I’ve been on the docks at Skagway. Mudchicken is having some fun with us.
Here’s some background for those that don’t know it. The White Pass & Yukon (actually several seperately incorporated lines due to the fact that they were “International”) was built from Skagway, Alaska to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, 110 miles, just before the turn of the 19th-20th Century. Gold had been found “Way Up North” and people went in to get it. The WP&Y was built to bring in supplies and provide general transportation. It was built to a 3’ gauge. Skagway was the “natural” ocean supply port for the Yukon Territory, even though it was in the US instead of Canada.
The WP&Y continued to function as the main supply route into the Yukon after the gold rush. This sounds impressive, but The Yukon only had about 30,000 people. The railroad was important enough that the US Army took it over in WWII and operated it with a Railway Operating Battalion. It hauled supplies needed to build that Alaska Highway. Narrow gauge steam locomotives were brought in from Colorado to handle the increased traffic.
The WP&Y pioneered intermodalism. There is a dispute as to just what was the first “Container Ship”. Some say it was Sea Land’s “Ideal X”. I think the WP&Y company’s “Clifford J. Rogers” holds the title. Containers were loaded in Vancouver, BC., taken by ship to the Skagway Docks (which I have been on), loaded on to flatcars, moved to Whitehorse,
Greyhounds:
I’ve had some professional involvment in the actual railroad and the economic development prospects of Alaska and the Yukon.
The railroad owns the three docks in Skagway and built the docks. Not the government.
There are three docks: the Railroad Dock, the Broadway Dock, and the Ore Dock. The railroad chose to make the rail in what is called the “Railroad Dock” to standard-gauge because it was in the process of standard-gauging the railroad to haul both freight and tourists, in order to reduce operating costs. It would reduce operating costs just for the tourist business alone. The railroad’s parent company was acquired by another holding company, management was changed, and the standard-gauging project was canceled.
All docks have indeed handled freight and that is why there is track in them. Not for tourist trains, though they could be used for that if anyone wanted.
I’ve found the reality of public-private partnership, mining and mineral lands development, logistics, and railroading in Alaska and the Yukon to be extraordinarily difficult. There have been all number of people who have tried to impose ideals onto the situation from both ends of the political spectrum, both those who think that government should run everything and those who think government should run nothing. They come and go, but they leave their wreckage behind. I do not know of any idealists who have succeeded in accomplishing anything in Alaska and the Yukon other than delaying economic development.
RWM
Very long document from one of the groups promoting the construction of an Alaska Canada rail link about the possibility of reintroducing freight service on the WP&Y including the possibility of rebuilding it to standard gauge;
OK.
IIRC the train I got on was partially out on the pier to load passengers. It had three of those 800 HP GE shovel nose diesels. The locomotives were not on the pier. Only the passenger cars were shoved out by the ship. (I walked over and actually touched one of those little locom
There’s lots of material available on line that quantifies the value of the railroad, the mineral resources, and the territory. It’s not hidden from view. Not sure what you consider to be rational.
RWM
The South had a fair amount of broad gauge trackage before the war, and I think there was some narrow gauge too. There wasn’t a separate northern gauge and southern gauge, although the north probably had a higher percentage standard gauge.
Seems to me the north was more interested in destroying the south’s tracks than using them?? Making “Sherman’s bowties” of the rails etc.