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Major Australian railroad to see conversion to standard gauge
As always, it is good to see investment in railroads. I am sorry it took them 20 years to get the funding. I am assuming that their “standard gauge” is the same as ours, 4 foot 8.5 inches?
Standard Gauge is 4’8 1/2" around the world.
Next, the former Soviet Union and India…
Map please?
Last time this happened was the Riverfront (ex-Public Belt) line in New Orleans a few years ago.
Actually, the Riverfront did it backwards; from standard to broad gauge.
The Erie did this in one day and they had nine more inches of difference. Certainly they can do this in an afternoon.
Yes, the New orleans streetcars run on a broad gauge, and the Riverfront Line, I believe was L&N. Were the rails embedded in asphalt, or simply standard construction?
Except for several road crossings the Riverfront line track and ties are exposed. When the line first opened the streetcars’ running gear were re-gauged to standard to run on the existing L&N tracks. The streetcars were re-gauged to broad to be able to connect with the Canal line and thus all use the same maintenance barn. The St. Charles and Canal streetcar were always broad gauge.
Again it is shown that Wisconsin voters are typically thoughtful and intelligent, with occasional disasters in political decision making. I’m thinking of Senator Joe McCarthy and Governor Scott Walker. Meanwhile, good for Michigan and Talgo!
Few realize it but Conrail, UP, and some other US carriers spike high speed main line tangent track to 4’ 8 1/4" and not 4’ 81/2". There must be 31’ feet of track used for the change of gage and all crossings and curves are at 4’ 8 1/2". This reduces hunting which is the trucks going into a shimmy at high speed.
The Erie was 6’0" gage for about 40 years before it was narrowed. It always benefitted with the wider right of way for large industrial shipments that could not be routed over any other railroad. Many railroad used 4 rails for conversion.
The D&GR used may miles of 3 rail dual gauge but some of their lines were built 4-rail because the old rail was too small and could cause too much weight onto the lower journal bearing so they laid new larger rail outside the small inner rails of narrow gauge. When there were switches, such as in the towns en route, they used a draw rail and went from 4-rail to 3-rail, and built all switches to 3-rail design and then went through a draw again to 4-rail out on the long tangents. This happened across the San Luis valley and on part of the line to Creede and other branches on their system. In this manner, the conversion was made overnight by just stopping the trains of the gage being eliminated. The Farmington branch was originally built as isolated SG in 1905 in expectation the line to it would be widen, but in 1923 when a oil boom required oil train movement over the ng RGS, the line was converted to narrow gauge rather than made dual gauge. The D&RGW feared the Southern Pacific building up into Farmington and requiring trackage-rights to reach their property in West Durango. The narrow gauge conversion was a defensive action against the Harriman regime as much as aiding their traffic movements. On Harriman s death, the construction plans of the SP building into Farmington died with him.
That Farmington Branch gage change was done on Labor Day weekend as it was simple. Most of th
Now, if the @National_Model_Railroad_Association (NMRA) will only just narrow their “standard gauge” from 5 scale feet to 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches in scale. And make the rails, train wheels and flanges thinner to be prototypical.
That s the most stupid think ever heard. Therefore everyone car and engine could no longer be used, and with the prototypical flange size every train would surely derail very often as no one cold build perfect track that would handle that fine detail. Throw out the generation of testing what worked. Did you ever build a train and track to this prototypical design and get it to work? The back to back distance between wheels is the most critical measurement in any railroad and guard rails must be exact.
All this work has taken since the 1950s when they envisaged standardising all of the Australian networks and still have a very long way to go. It must be noted that state governments mostly supply funding for these projects with often little input from the federal government if at all.
Queensland has only about 50 miles of standard guage (Brisbane to the border) so it can connect to the rest of the Australian network and has never thought of converting its 3foot6 to standard.
There is now a proposal to build an inland rail line from Melbourne to Brisbane in standard guage , but like every rail project it will be out dated before its began and Australia will suffer the change of guage
What is stupid, @WCook, is that the NMRA settled for out-of-scale dimensions on model railway infrastructure.
With conversion to prototypical dimensions including track gauge, there will always be tracks available for older model trains. And, these trains can be changed to more prototypical trucks and wheels as is currently done when adopting to fine scale.