A different prototype and gauge.

["JaBear"]

While it's only early autumn in the Northern Climes and everyone should be making the most of the hopefully good weather and sun, here's a link to some footage of 1950s New Zealand Railways" just in case the weather makes for indoor activities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDdsgQtmsq8&index=3&list=PLFjRz3quvmyAS_dlmagdtPXaXg-N9v3DP

Hope you enjoy.

Cheers, the Bear.

[ndbprr]

Really it is summer here. It just feels like autumn.

[BATMAN]

Thanks Bear, great movie. I got a real kick out of the kids putting coins on the track near the end. Brought back lots of memories.

[tomikawaTT]

Howdy, Bear,

Won't be autumn here (i.e., air temperature below blood temperature) for five weeks yet.  Of course, we know it's winter when the eye candy puts a long sleeve shirt over the usual tube top...

As for different gauge, 1067mm (my standard) and 42" (your standard) can be measured with the same gauge bar.  Maybe that's because Great Britain and the US beat Germany to the Japanese market - and the French never got there at all.

Love the video.

Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - 1:80 scale in a Southern Nevada garage)

[mlehman]

Bear,

Great stuff, thanks fo the link! Plentgy more there that will be of interest, too.

[DSchmitt]

I liked the 300'+ pre-fab track sections with welded rail for the tunnel.  Was that being done anywhere else in the world?

[mlehman]

DSchmitt

I liked the 300'+ pre-fab track sections with welded rail for the tunnel.  Was that being done anywhere else in the world?

 

Welded rail? Yes, although this was a technology that was still being sorted in 1956.

The particular infrastructure I'm not so sure, in fact may have been used specifically for the tunnel project. The rail welding plant could certainly have served other projects with sticks of rail easily enough and I suspect that's what happened after the tunnel was done. The thing that suggested it was a tunnel-only set-up was the fact that the gantry cranes that lifted the panels were rolled forward. That required a paved surface here. I suppose a fat-tired version for non-tunnel locations might work, but I suspect the panels were mostly a tunnel only project.

Bear can tell us how far off my edumicated guess was.

["JaBear"]

mlehman

Bear can tell us how far off my edumicated guess was.

My apologies for not replying earlier as I was w**king away from home and off the net.

This is just my edumicated guess Mike but I’d have to concur with your edumicated guess. As I gather the rail was welded into 351’ lengths at the Woburn Works (Hutt Railway Workshops) and then railed over about 16 miles of “reasonably” curved track to Mangaroa where the prefabricated track sets were assembled. Then on to the Rimitaka Tunnels eastern portal another 2 miles distance. As the film shows us how the 351’ prefab sections over-hung on the curves, I can only surmise this was for the tunnel construction only.

In the Special Bibliography: Safety related technology, by the National Research Council (US) Railroad Research Information Service refers to two publications which contain articles that would appear to indicate that“Flash butt welding” and “Rail end Hardening” of rail seems to have been a reasonably common practise in New Zealand by 1958, though being the year I was born I can’t recollect seeing it myself. 

I did come across this photo showing the Murupara Branch being built in 1954 using these more manageable prefab lengths.....

http://ketekawerau.peoplesnetworknz.info/en/sir_james_fletcher_kawerau_museum/images/show/214-laying-the-railway-line-between-murupara-and-kawerau-1954?view_size=large

 

Your comments Chuck regarding the commonality of the gauge between Japan and New Zealand intrigued me, though I would suggest that Wikipedia is incorrect in its surmise that British engineer Edmund Morel introduced the Cape gauge into Japan from his railroad construction experience in New Zealand. The problem, as I see it, is that during his time spent in NZ; 1862-1863, what limited railway construction that was going on was either in Standard or Broad (5’3”) Gauges. It was not until, under Sir Julius Vogel, The Colonial Parliaments’ Railways Act of 1870 stipulated that railway gauge would not exceed 3’6” and the first official communication that adopted 3’6” was dated 21 December 1870. I would suggest that Cape Gauge was adopted, coincidently, in both countries for the “ease” and cost of construction.

I can remember Brent at around the tender age of nine placing a“new fangled” one cent piece on the track and being told off because I could have derailed the Train!!! I didn’t do it again though that may have been more about being frugal cos with one cent, if memory serves me correctly, I could buy either four wine gums or six aniseed balls. 

Cheers, the Bear.

[tomikawaTT]

Bear, I believe you're right about the Wikipedia surmise being full of hot air.

A matter of historical fact.  When Commodore Matthew Perry signed the US - Japan treaty of friendship, one of President Fillmore's gifts to the Imperium was, "One locomotive, with tender, passenger car and track."  That was in 1854.  So far, I haven't been able to determine the gauge of that locomotive.

Just as an aside, most of the rest of the gifts were smallarms and alcoholic beverages.

Incidentally, I just learned that there were 12-drivered locos in Japan prior to my 'imagineered' Tomikawa Tani Tetsudo 2-6-6-2T.  IGR acquired 0-6-6-0 compound Mallets (with really strange 6-wheel tenders - 2-4, with the last two axles in an arch-bar truck) from Alco, Baldwin and Hanomag.  The last were withdrawn from service in 1934.

Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - 110 years after the introduction of rail technology to Japan)