A big problem with changing the gauge is that the clearances must be increased or you don’t gain anything. All yard and double track, signals, lineside obsticles must be respaced and that is a huge cost. The real gain would be the larger clearnce (loading gauge), not neccessarily a larger track gauge.
Look at the Newfoundland railway (CNR) , that was narrow gauge with standard 40’ boxcars. In some counrtys standard gage rail cars are piggybacked on narrow gage lines. In Japan narrow gauge trains are capable of 140 mph runnuing, exept for that the curves are too sharp and the right of way in most places is too old. But the gauge does not restrict much.
So my conclusion is that if narrow gauge railways can handle standard roling stock, then standard gauge track should handle broad stock. There are examples of this in a few places outside the USA. Although I do beleive some heavy interurban trollys in California had 12’ wide coach bodys at one time.
It’s hard to beleive that a broader gauge would help a train from blowing off the tracks by wind. If the train is too light , it’s gonna be too light for any gage in the wind.
Carne, follow what Bucyrus and others have said. Today’s standard guage was adapted over 100 years ago and we are entrenched in it. Possibly to a fault. Trying to change to a broader guage is probably too costly to undertake now. That being said does not mean that a broader guage would be without advantages (and disadvantages) both economic and operational. The major disadvantage right now, of course, it the immense cost of converting, probably a cost never recoverable by any gains made by doing it. But it doesn’t mean that standard is better either.
The same goes for those who are proponents of narrow guage. It did have its advantages as to cost of building and in operating to a degree. But it could not take the load demand of commerce except in a few, provincial applications.
And as for your comparison to highway lanes, Carne, it doesn’t make sense to even mention it. We have (the world) set our standards of width and hight at what they are. But compare a c1900 auto compared to a modern semi, and you see there has been a growth in hight and weight. And with the help of the highway and oil lobby, the end is not in sight as they have again asked congress for bigger rigs on our highway system.
I’m not an engineer, TH&B, but even I know that a lower center of gravity and a broader footprint brings stabilazation. Look at towers and poles that are guy wired then look at 100 story buildings that aren’t.
You do make some points in that what you say has been done. It just doesn’t mean that it is economical or even effecient. If it were, for one thing, it would be being done all over.
Today, standard gauge seems like the perfect choice because it emerged as the consensus over a century ago, nobody questions it, and it appears to work perfectly. The larger reality, however, is that there is no point in questioning it because it cannot be changed.
Before the consensus, when there was freedom to choose the gauge, there were many opinions on what the ideal gauge should be, all based on the cost of construction and operation for each individual railroad. This engineering and operating cost analysis was quite complex, and there were some brilliant minds working out the problem. Even for an individual railroad company, the choice of gauge was a big commitment.
But more important than an ideal gauge for individual railroad economics was the need for consensus for a common or standard gauge because it was an absolute necessity for interchange compatibility. So they picked what seemed like the best gauge on average for their 1800s era, and put the matter to rest.
Since the adoption of standard gauge, however, the physical dimensions of locomotives, rolling stock, and track components have increased considerably while the gauge has remained the same.
True, there is the high center of gravity issue. But don’t you think huge double stack cars and Automax cars raise the center of gravity in height ? There are ways of engineering around this that is easier then widening the gauge. Trains generaly do have high centers of gravity compared to trucks and cars anyways, a high center of gravity presses down on the rail more then sideways, wich is what you want.
Narrow gauge died slower then broad gauge in the private railroads of the USA, wich suggests to me it wasn’t as bad an idea as broad gauge.
Maybe a test, of several theories put forth here would be captive, mine to powerplant railroads that don’t interchange with any other railroad. What gauge were they built with?
I believe most that I can think of were built to standard guage. But just before I read your post, I was wondering if a railroad might consider such a thing - even to the point of reguaging a standard gauge redundant line and running purpose built equipment over it (ie, dedicated coal trains). Would the economics lend themselves to expansion of the concept, in terms of cost to operate vs revenue generated (the cost of the investment would only be a factor for so long)? Or would it not be worth the time and expense?
On the other hand, if the test bed proved profitable, it might convince others in a similar situation to re-guage, eventually leading to a decision to reguage the entire network. Since we’d be going to a wider guage, existing cars would still work (unlike a move in the opposite direction, where you’d have significant clearance issues if moving a broad guage car into a line with standard guage clearances). They’d just need to be re-trucked. Certainly not an inexpensive option, but one that would allow continued use of existing equipment. Obviously new equipment would be built to new standards.
Of course, now we have all new clearance issues which would affect everything from industries to two-track mains…
I’m not coming down as an advocate for broad guage, and I don’t see the economics as being favorable, but never say never…
TH&B, you are trying to operate a merry-go-round here instead of drawing lines of acceptence. Evidently there seems to be no place any of us can meet you with explanations and facts. You are trying to reinvent the wheel and it just isn’t working. Nothing anybody says will satisfy you.
They have tended to be standard gauge because its application advantage has grown to extend beyond the need for interchange compatibility, and on to the benefit of standard off-the-shelf components being the lowest cost compared to customized components.
There is a very heavy duty 3-foot-gauge railroad in Columbia that I don’t know much about, but it would be interesting to learn its history and why it is narrow gauge. Maybe somebody has some information about it.
Indeed, which is why my theoretical test would most likely never take place.
Still, leave it to an accountant to figure out that by running cars that carry X tons of something (ie many more), instead of what we’re running now, and with the same crew, the railroad can make more money.
I will quote an engineering professor I heard 25 years ago in college, who reiterated the same feelings that were cited in a “Quotes of the Month” in Trains at around the same time:
“The first thing you need to know with regards to the engineering demands of railroads is that the tracks are too damned narrow. If we had the entire concept to do all over again from scratch, we’d start with a gauge of at least two meters or six feet. But in all likelihood you’re never going to get a chance to start from scratch, so assume you’re stuck with standard gauge, meter gauge, or at worst Russian gauge.”
This speaks strictly from an engineering standpoint, not an economics standpoint. George Hilton’s book American Narrow Gauge Railroads did a fairly good job of debunking the popular myth of economies of scale in narrow gauge rail construction; one could extrapolate that a similar rationale applied to the extra incremental cost of right-of-way, track, etc. of a six-foot or eight-foot-gauge system could show long-term savings. Note that as engineering has advanced, car loadings and sizes have increased dramatically as well. Today’s unit trains are basically double the weight, capacity, etc. of even the longest trains of the steam era, with 100±ton coal hoppers the norm rather than 50-ton hoppers in steam days.
Nobody is even attempting to make a case for refitting any of the current North American network to a broader gauge–the costs of new engineering, loco and car designs, etc. are just too great unless someone is working with a grandiose 50- or 100-year economic plan. But upgrades have happened, such as Japan’s Shinkansen being built to standard gauge rather than Japan’s "normal 42-inch gauge.
You did have the right idea about the bridges. Too bad that Marin County voted the way they did (along with San Mateo and Santa Clara) - BART could have been a very impressive system.
When you talk about track gauges on conventional railroads, the key question is whether the supposed advantages of a particular gauge outweigh the disadvantages of having a gauge that’s incompatible with most other railroads. What we call “standard gauge” became “standard” more by chance rather than because of any intrinsic advantages over other (particularly broader) gauges. If we were designing the U.S. railroad network from scratch today, we probably would choose a somewhat wider gauge. But “standard gauge” became the “standard” for the U.S rail network by the late 1860’s. Interchange traffic wasn’t very significant for early railroads but, as the railroads became more of a network and interchange became more important, the ability to freely interchange easily trumped any intrinsic advantages of non-standard guages, whether broad or narrow. There’s a good discussion of the gauge issues in Hilton’s book on narrow gauge railroads.
With respect to BART, the decision to built this as broad guage was almost certainly a mistake, but there were a lot of mistakes made with BART (after all, BART was designed by aerospace people to show railroad people how to do things the “right” way). I’m not aware of anything in a rapid transit system that would make the broader gauge a superior choice - certainly loading gauge isn’t a problem with their equipment. While interchange is obviously not an issue with BART, every rail borne vehicle they buy - from MOW equipment to passenger cars - has to be customed designed for their unique gauge. Some things are gifts that keep on giving, but BART’s wide gauge is a gift that keeps on taking.
Somewhat OFF-TOPIC, BUT; mandated lane width for the Interstate Highway system is 12 feet. Maximum allowed vehicle width (excluding mirrors, etc) is 8 1/2 feet!
The one thing that I haven’t seen mentioned in this thread is the actual source of the ‘standard’ in standard gauge.
Would you believe - Congressional fiat!!!
First, when the Pacific Railway Act of 1862 specified that the trans-continental railroad would have to adhere to the dimensions of the B&O - including the 56.5 inch track gauge.
Then, after a really horrible accident involving a train with wheels designed to handle everything from 54 inches to 58 inches, Congress decreed that all railroads which interchanged cars would be built to, or rebuilt to, the B&O standard.
So, the first thing you would have to do to change over to a wider gauge would be to repeal a couple of Acts of Congress. Please let me know when you plan to do this - I want time enough to take cover.
Broad gauge died quicker because most of the railroads involved, ie Erie and its connections and the pre Civil War southern roads among others, were involved in significant interchange of loads and needed to be compatible with their neighbors. Additionally, the government got into the mix and as part of the legislation enabling the construction of the transcontinenal railroad determined that the gauge of railroads who would participate in interstate commerce would be 56 1/2 inches. Lincoln stated that he thought that it was an odd gauge and would prefer 5 foot but enacted the law as Congress wrote it.
The narrow gauge lines for the most part had much less interchange, or the nature of the interchange did not interfere with the difference in gauge. The EBT is the best example, narrow gauge raw coal to the cleaner, then standard gauge cars to the PRR. Many others brought agriculture products to an interchange where brokers would combine individual farm lots into car loads.
It is also much easier to adapt the larger clearances, bridges and tunnels of broad gauge to standard than it is to widen cuts, replace bridges, and enlarge tunnels of narrow gauges to permit standard gauge operations.
Perhaps in this ‘bigger gauge’ question, we should look at the vertical dimension instead of the horizontal. In brief:
We humans live mainly on the surface of the land, and those 2 ‘flat’ dimensions are generally the most important to us from an ownership, right-of-way, and usage standpoint. The 3rd dimension - up - is less critical, and usually does not require as extensive or troublesome additional R-O-W acquisition or impacts as would a ‘wider’ track and R-O-W. I readily acknowledge that ‘air rights’, low overhead bridges, tunnels, and the like are obstacles, but I’m don’t know that dealing with those vertical obstacles would be any worse or more expensive than dealing with the same or similar physical obstacles to going ‘wider’.
The railroad technology - with its essentially rigid steel rails and wheels, etc. - is far better suited to provide more stability for taller vehicles than the soft rubber-tired vehicles on highways. present-day heavy-duty track technology is now much better towards providing stiffer and more ‘solid’ track, and measuring and eliminating the cross-level deviations that cause cars to rock. So the remaining challenge is to develop more stable vehicles than the relatively ‘tippy’ present-day cars, which are usually balanced on only 2 points of support at the truck bolster center plates, and rely on the