What is (in centimeters, if possible) the standard American gauge?
What was the NARROW GAUGE? In the USA the Narrow Gauge was standard or were there different measures?
Thank you
roberto@henrys.com.br
Brazil.
Standard gauge is 4ft 8 1/2 inches. Narrow gauge is anything less than that. The most popular narrow gauge was 3ft except in Maine where it was 2ft. Some of the mass transit systems and private railroads use other gauges. Sorry don’t have a ft/inches to centimeters converter.
Enjoy
Paul
Someone with a conversion scale is going to have to come up with the centemeters:
Standard Gauge-56.5 inches > Generally accespted as the tread distance between the wheels of a Roman Chariot< Don’t ask me how that came about, but is what I have always heard?
Narrow Gauge- Out West [ ie: Colorado] it was 36inches
and in Maine it was 24 inches [ The “Maine Two Footers”]
I believe in the US (and in the remaining of north America: Mexico and Canada) standard gauge is the same than everywhere: 1.435 meter.
Narrow gauge in the US is 3 feet (0.914 meter), or 2’ (0.609 meter).
Hope this helps,
Dominique, who is dreaming to see US carbody gauge on metric track gauge on the EFVM railroad…
[#ditto]
Ed Blyssard the Unihead Snowman has been trying to comply with your request. The Port of Houston has been exporting re-gauged US locomotives to go south on a steady regular basis.
Well, I think you got the metric conversiion right, but I have better dreams than you do.
Which ones[?]
Roberto,4’ 81/2" is 56.5" converted is 143.51 cm.I am using the conversion device at www.sciencemadesimlpe.net/length.php
Hope the link works.It did not,so try this www.sciencemadesimple.net then click on conversarion at the menu bar on top,go to length where you can convert inches to cm
Roberto, it depends on the time frame.
Prior to the U.S. Civil War “standard” gauges were standard to a given region or even a given road. Generally, standard below the Mason-Dixon line was 5 ft and above it was 4 feet 8 and 1/2 inches (sort of - some were 4 feet 9 and 4 feet 10) and then there was the Erie broad gauge at 6 feet.
In the mid 1880’s the last of the North-South running 5 foot gauge railroads were re-gauged to 4 feet 8 and 1/2 inches. As for where that width came from - it’s anybody’s guess - the Roman chariot story is, I’m afraid, just another urban legend. What is known is that was the gauge of Stephenson’s exports to the U.S. Since his products were essentially the Microsoft of the age, that gauge became “standard” in many parts of the U.S.
We never heard of the Erie, did we?[:D] …Best explanation I have seen to date is Professor Hiltons book on the American Narrow Gage which discussed in detail, the background of the various gauges in the US.
http://www.trains.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/000/000/003/011gsqfq.asp
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804723699/ref=nosim/103-5272214-0890222?n=283155
You have, as well, politicians stepping -in and screwing up things in the 1870’s dictating that (as example) gauge in Ohio would be 4’-10"…[}:)]
Streetcars and some interurbans were 3’6" or 4’-0" (to prevent interchange and some other odd assorted reasons[%-)][%-)][%-)])
…It’s amazing it all got settled out at 4’ 8 1/2" overall…{With exception of the narrow gauge that mostly worked in the wilderness logging, etc…}. Yes, I know there were others, even in my home state…such as East Broad Top.
You don’t need a device…
inches x 2.54 = cm
It was the politicians who decided the standard gauge in Ireland should be 5’ 3".
The first railway there, the Dublin & Kingstown was 4’ 8.5" when it opened in 1834. But then the Ulster Railway which ran southwards from Belfast was 6’ 2" gauge. So some clever politician rounded these values to 4’ 6" and 6’ respectively. He then took the average which was 5’ 3". I forget this guy;s name but he must have had the gift of Blarney because both railways agreed to convert to 5’ 3"!
The only other countries which use the Irish Standard gauge are Brazil and some Australian states.
Also former USSR, isn’t it?
As mentioned elsewhere, Russia uses 5’ gauge. As the Australians have pointed out in another thread sometime back, multiple gauges create an entire raft of problems. India uses 5’6" and meter gauge (both gauges have extensive networks) and is in the process of converting its meter gauge trackage to broad gauge.
In most countries with multiple gauges, there is one predominant gauge and the other gauge is a small, geographically compact network.
No, the former USSR uses 1520mm gauge (just under 5 feet).
There’s some info and links here - http://www.sdrm.org/faqs/gauge/
Tony
(and for a while, British Rail used 1432mm - instead of 1435mm - as the standard track gauge)
The Stockton and Darlington Railroad already ran with what we call standard gauge. I have heard, this gauge was chosen for the railroad because some coal-mines in the region used it already.
Here’s the history behind the roman chariot - railroad gauge width story. Somewhere out there is a link for the professor who originally came up with this, I’ll see if I can find it. This is basically how it works.
In ancient times, the Romans controlled a good part of Europe. One thing about the Roman Empire was standardization. They built standardized roads all across Europe. The “Standard” chariot was designed to be pulled by two horses.
As chariots ran across the roads, they began to develop ruts in the roads. Chariot wheels would get stuck running in the ruts, and when you tried to turn, or the chariot strayed sideways, the wheel got stuck in the rut and broke (these wheels were wooden, remember.) So an approximate standard was created. Because the Romans were almost everywhere, over time, this just became the “standard” for most road vehicles (wagons, etc.)
The first people to use rails for transportation in cities were horsecar companies in the 1830s. They ran service in the city streets with railed vehicles because the rails gave a smoother ride than the cobblestones, and people soon discovered that a few horses could pull more people, a heavier load, on rails, with a better ride, than on wheeled vehicles on the normal dirt/cobblestone streets.
The standard gauge was kept for a few reasons. Early horsecar/railroad carriage makers also built wagons, hence the same size. Also, when rails were laid in the city streets, you had a similar problem to the ruts in the road from Roman chariots. If the rails were narrow, wagon wheels would get stuck outside each rail, a problem when turning across the rails. Now, instead of ruts that undercut the road, you had rails that stuck up from the road a little bit. If the rails were wide, wagon wheels would get trapped between the rails, a potentially dangerous situation. By making the rail width the same as the wagon wheel width, most wagons could simply stay to the right of the tracks, of if they happened
One additional comment - the gauge of the locomotive did not determine the gauge of the RR. The locomotives were built for whatever gauge the RR wanted, unless the engineer building the locomotives and the railroad was the same person, at which point it doesn’t matter.
The gauge doesn’t really effect the disign of the locomotive. There is no real difference between 5 foot gauge or 4 foot gauge. In one, the wheels and drive cyllinders are just 6 inches farther to the left. The locomotive body, boiler, etc could well be the same, just sitting on a different frame with wider or narrower wheels. Now you couldn’t but a standarg guage loco on 2 foot guage tracks- it would be too big and wide. But small diferences of a foot or less didn’t really change the locomotive at all, merely how far apart the wheels would be.
Some trolleys ran on different gauge tracks so that freight railroads, or even the trolley companies, could not decide to try and run railroad freight through the downtown on the trolley tracks (the gauge would not be compatible.) This was meant to limit the trolley companies to only trolleys. Cities wanted nothing to do with long freight where it didn’t belong on crowded city streets.