Yes, it really was that much cheaper. For one, it’s not necessary to convert 100% of the fleet simultaneously, only just enough to get by, whereas the track really needs to be 100% one or the other.
What railways did when they converted gauge is set aside some of the locomotive and car fleet in advance for conversion, through the simple expedient of limiting service to roughly 50% of pre-conversion levels. The next day, using a different fleet, they were still at 50% but with fleet levels increasing every day as more converted equipment rolled out. A railway can readily accomplish this by refusing the low-value freight shipments and marginal passenger services, and provide only the high-value services, for the period during which some of the fleet is out of service. The equipment availability graph looks like an upside down bell curve. The services out at the margins of the bell curve make little money and are incremental business.
Also, railways often purchased equipment to the new gauge that was delivered just prior to the conversion, and could borrow for a brief period equipment from any number of neighboring roads. If they already had some standard-gauge track used at interchanges, it would simply neglect to return empties to interchange partners.
The lost business opportunity during the conversion was thus small. And if one is clever and schedules the conversion for late spring/early summer, traffic is at a nadir and much of the equipment is doing nothing anyway. Conversion in late fall during the harvest and livestock rush, and with coal traffic starting to move again for the winter months, would be a bad idea.
RWM
The question of converting narrow gage equipment to standard gage at the time the track is converted is something I had never thought about. I have heard of equipment gage conversions here and there, up and down, especially with locomotives. I seem to recall incidences of standard gage rolling stock being converted to narrow gage, or run on narrow gage such as East Broad Top. But converting a line’s rolling stock to standard gage to correspond to a track conversion is something I was not aware of. What would be the procedure of converting a narrow gage boxcar to a standard gage boxcar for instance? I would have thought they just sold or scrapped the narrow gage rolling stock and replaced it with standard gage cars.
When the Atlantic Coast Line changed from the southern standard guage to standard guage in 1886, it too was done in one day. wheelsets and trucks were sent out to preselcted points and stored. When the day came, trains left gangs of gandy dancers at various points, each with a specified stretch of track to change. The trains were then stopped at the preselected points, jacked up and the wheelsets were changed. Then, the same trains went back on the now standard guage and picked up the crews who had moved the rail. All in one day…
I suppose that if the gage change was small, they would just change wheelsets and continue using the rest of the car, including its original trucks. I know they had compromise wheels at one time to enable running on different gages if they were only a few inches different. From what I understand, the compromise wheels were a major compromise of safety. What was southeren standard gage? Was that 4’-10"?
Southern gauge was 5’, same as Russia.
American Narrow Gauge Railroads by George Hilton makes the following references regarding gage conversions, including the largest one-day conversion from narrow to standard gage, which was executed on the Cotton Belt RR. on October 18, 1886.
They placed 2000 men along the 418 miles of the entire Arkansas Division extending from Bird’s Point, Missouri to Texarkana, and shifted one rail over between 5:00 AM and 6:00 PM.
They had spent the previous 12-16 hours moving the narrow gage rolling stock out of the way to various sidings along the line.
In preparation, they had replaced 1.5 million short ties with long ties.
They converted most of the locomotives to standard gage and placed some of the rolling stock onto standard gage trucks, but these were regarded as temporary measures.
These quick conversions demanded so much short-term labor that they were typically carried out on a Sunday when the most labor was available.
There were a variety of methods of conversion including:
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Replacing all narrow gage ties with standard gage ties and then moving one rail outward.
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Replacing all narrow gage ties with standard gage ties and then moving both rails outward.
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Moving both rails outward on the narrow gage ties and later replacing the ties with standard gage ties.
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Replacing some of the narrow gage ties with standard gage ties and then moving one or both rails outward.
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Variations of the above combined with replacing the rail with heavier rail, or adding a third rail.
The method of moving one rail was not without controversy. W.C. Camp published his ideas on the subject, including his contention that moving one rail was an undesirable method because it temporarily placed the track off-center on the ties prior to the conversion, thus