Wide gauge trains

[lionelsoni]

But they did build it, and used it very effectively on one occasion.  Hannebu, on the other hand, is a myth.

"Sonderwaffen" means "special weapons".  The German name for "wonder weapons" was, not surprisingly, "Wunderwaffen".  The Vergeltungswaffen or vengeance weapons, like the V1 and V2, were types of Wunderwaffen.

[Penny Trains]

Ja, collectively the German special weapons projects were known as the "Sonderwaffen" or wonder weapons.  Fortunately, most of what they worked on was a failure.  Their design for an atomic bomb weighed thousands of kilos more than the Manhattan Project's bomb.  But they did succeed with the V-1 cruise missile, V-2 ballistic missile and the ME 262 tactical fighter-jet aircraft.  Reich leadership loved highly exotic designs and I suspect only they could have pulled off something like a rail gun that ran on 2 separate rail lines simultaneously.  Lucky for us, and more importantly the slaves who would have had to build the thing, it was not meant to be.

If you really want to see some bizzarre stuff, check out something called "Hannebu".

Back to the real world, I have a documentary I taped off PBS years ago that shows a roundhouse in Australia with a 5 gauge turntable!

Becky

[lionelsoni]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwerer_Gustav

http://ww2db.com/weapon.php?q=89

[phillyreading]

I remember reading somewhere that in WW2, Germany had an artillery piece(155 mm. or larger cannon) that used two parallel sets of tracks to run on. In otherwords it had two sets of trucks at each end, sort of like a deepwell machinery car except that it had double the number of trucks, not very manuverable by today's standards.

Lee F.

[295murase]

I love Breitspurbahn.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Breitspurbahn/103220083067265
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Breitspurbahn/178542958829456
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitspurbahn
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitspurbahn_(Nationalsozialismus)
http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=69415
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=464566
http://www.breitspurbahn.de/3000.html
http://www.breitspurbahn.de/images/barnes3.jpg
http://www.breitspurbahn.de/images/breit1.jpg
http://www.csu-lichtenhof.de/bhf_m2.jpg
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitspurbahn

 

[lionelsoni]

It was called the "Breitspurbahn" ("wide-gauge road"), originally 4-meter gauge, then later a more modest 3 meters (about 10 feet).

[FJ and G]

Bob,

Interesting. Taking things to extremes would be Hitler's arrogance. On the drawing boards, he had designs for super broad tracks. I forget the gauge, but 12 feet comes to mind (do have to credit them w/the autobahn, however, which spurred us to do the interstate).

[lionelsoni]

I followed the construction of BART at the time. It was designed by folks who thought that traditional railroaders were old fuddy-duddies and that they could show them up with a high-tech, space-age, etc., railroad. They got their come-uppance when the newly built trains showed an alarming tendency to run into each other, if they ran at all. After a lot of redesign and crow-eating, the system got into operation. I am sure that the 5'6 gauge resulted from arrogance and from ignorance of the now-commonly-accepted knowledge that, within broad limits, gauge has little to do with railroad performance.

[FJ and G]

Very good! I'm not really sure why it was built wide but my theory is that it has something to do with the supersizing of Americans.

[lionelsoni]

BART is 5'6. The Erie was 6'.

The Lionel "General" is a model of a 5'-gauge prototype. It is the only Lionel O-gauge locomotive I know of that runs on the correct scale track. However, the model, unlike most other Lionel models, is too large for the scale! The prototype ran well into the 20th century, regauged to 4'8.5, and is now in a museum, in Kennesaw ("Big Shanty"), GA.

[FJ and G]

For those who model in the 1800s, there actually were wider-than-4'8.5" trains. The South had, I think 5' as did the Erie. I don't expect, however, to see models of these in 3-rail; much less in any other scale.

One of the widest gauge railroads, incidentally, was built in the late 20th century! And it still exists in the U.S.

Can you guess what it is?

I'll give you 20 minutes to try.