A train to move large ships cross country

[FJ and G]

One fellow's interesting perspective

A WIDE GAUGE RAILROAD for EFFICIENT PIGGYBACK
by; Charles Weber

A wide gauge railroad would make piggyback trucking much more efficient and would have economies of scale for bulk cargo.
I would like to propose a railroad system which would have such low charges that a cross country freight line would make the Panama Canal obsolescent. It involves the concept of wide gauge rails. The present system uses a rail gauge which tied right in with the wooden axles of Louis the XIVth stagecoaches. With modern metals, equipment is possible with spans of a hundred feet or more. Back in the days when capital (especially steel) was hard to come by, when track had to thread through and around valleys and mountains, engines were small, and railroads had to go through towns, narrow gauge rails were logical, in fact essential.

Now, we have massive freight tonnages, low cost Bessemer steel, huge earth moving machines for leveling right-of-ways, and fleets of supporting trucks. It seems strange to me to make railroads using such machines while the railroads themselves wander around the country using Toonerville trolleys.

A railroad with, say a 47 foot wide track, would be able to field cars with up to 1,000 times the capacity of the existing boxcars for low density loads (like furniture). This would represent a substantial escalation toward the cube of the gauge ratios for low-density cargo. This would represent a labor cost between 0.1% and 1% of existing costs for such cargo. The fuel costs would be considerably reduced also. Air resistance should increase about proportional to the gauge for long trains while the capacity for most cargo should rise about proportional to the square, or even better, of the gauge for that same air resistance. Bearing frictional losses and maintenance cost differentials are more difficult to predict, but there should be considerable advantage. While it is true that inertial losses from starting and stopping would be about the same, this should be an express line with stations as much as 100 miles apart and no switching yards, so there would be little starting and stopping. In addition, short trains would be practical, as short as even a single car (analogous to highway trucking), so that with competent scheduling, a car might well go across the whole continent without stopping. Furthermore, it might be possible to use the same geared wheel used for accelerating out of a station to feed power back into the system or into an adjacent town upon stopping. With such large equipment, many clever devices would be practical which would be too bulky for the present tiny equipment, such as Cotrell precipitators for pollution control.

The track would not require much more steel than existing tracks because the track would be almost straight. Flat 2 or 3 inch thick plates of manganese steel or high strength steel manganese edges on top of high strength concrete bases running in the same direction as the track would probably work fine if separated by a rubber mat. If the bases were in the form of a wall about seven feet high in some areas it would make children noticeably safer and make underpasses much easier. Zigzag end of rail expansion slots would be possible because of flat rails, thus permitting short rails and easy nailing (tie downs). The tie downs would be easy because manganese steel does not lose its great strength and hardness upon welding. If the wheel flanges were on the outside, the compression strength of concrete could be used for the "ties" (but actually they would be separators). No crushed stone bed would be necessary and few breaks in the concrete stringers not in the form of a wall should prove necessary if it were insulated against the worst temperature extremes of expansion and cooled with a water pipe.

At first you would think that the right of way would be expensive. Actually such a line could easily have a right of way narrower than an interstate highway. It would probably use no more concrete than an interstate highway. The only circumstance that would be much more expensive would be the various political costs of acquiring the right of way. This is because such a line would have to be much more strait than a truck road or even than a current railroad. If it happened to be heading inexorably toward a senator’s mansion, it would have to go through. But it would be worth the cost because it would take enormous amounts of traffic pressure off the interstates.

Where such a line would really come into its own, though, and the main reason for building it, would be as a piggyback operation. Trucks, barges, trailers, and railroad cars could be loaded and carried at right angles to the track. Thus, no layover loading time or switching would be required. The train could pull into the station, insert a punched card or disc into a computer, and in a few minutes, every device, truck, car, or Toonerville trolley supposed to be unloaded there would be moved off the train with hydraulic pistons or cables on its own wheels or skids. Then, immediately after, or even simultaneously, hydraulic pistons could push on the vehicles meant to be loaded. Furthermore, it would be practical for drivers to ride along, for it should be no problem to maintain an average speed of 40 or 50 miles per hour or more. The cost overnight might well be commensurate with motel and fuel charges, alone, to the trucker. If not, it could be subsidized. It would be well worth it to get those damn trucks off the highways.

There would be minimal demurrage charges. Ocean freight could not compete in safety, cost, or speed, especially for oil. Not even a new pipeline could compete moving oil or lignite from the west. Therefore, one right- of-way no wider than an interstate or less would do it all.

The advantage would not end there. As a system to reduce our military costs, it would dwarf the use of railroads in the Civil War. A two-ocean navy would be not nearly as essential, for ships as large as 70 feet wide by 300 feet long could be moved from one ocean to the other in less than half a week. Such a ship can handle any surface rockets and could even launch an airplane. If designed right, it could also land one. One submarine admiral when asked, estimated that capital ships would last two weeks in a major war. So these small ships might well be all we had to fight with anyway. It would also remove much of the financial horror of a terrorist sailing a boatload of ammonium nitrate into the Panama Canal and detonating it. Unlike the Panama Canal, such a line would be difficult to sabotage.

There is one more problem that could be solved with low cost freight. Eastern garbage could be moved to a western desert valley, and stock piled there against the time when there was enough "ore" to "mine" it for its mineral and energy content. There would be no danger to ground water from such a storage if designed right, nor would it be necessary to allow odors to escape. There would be no one around to complain about real or imagined problems. Instead of going to great expense to throw this valuable "ore" away in thousands of dangerous and expensive dumps while diluting it with tons of useless earth, it would inexpensively disappear from our cities. This system might be worth it for this alone.

Air cushion vehicles might prove even more practical than rail. Air flotation becomes more practical as vehicles become larger. The "tracks" should be much less expensive and the cars somewhat so. Moving disabled vehicles off the track anywhere along the line should be much easier. Braking is fail safe. If the air were cut off such a train should stop quicker than a truck. It should be able to tolerate much sharper curves. It would be an inexpensive way to explore whether the basic concept was as practical as I suggest. Nor would air vehicles be necessarily incompatible with flat steel rails if designed right.

One logical place for the test line would be between Ohio and Montana. Such a route would avoid the expense of bridges over the rivers of the southern Mississippi valley and be on easy terrain. If it proved practical, it could be extended coast-to-coast. If political problems could be solved, it might be a good way to link trade between North and South American, between Russia and China, and maybe even between Europe and Africa. It would make these areas noticeably more prosperous.

There has been a wide gauge system proposed for passenger service which has similar economies of scale by Raymond Lashley. In addition, it would have important attributes of safety because of the greater stability to rolling over which would make possible speeds which would start to compete with air transport. Since very light cars are envisioned it would probably be easily possible to integrate it with a wide gauge freight line as piggyback.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

Why even dream of building an impossibly huge system to move ships over dry land when the same goal is being accomplished by stack trains over the existing railroads?

Financing would be difficult at best and right-of-way acquisition would be pretty close to impossible. Environmental impact would hardly be minimal, especially where the line would cross the Rockies.

[88gta350]

I'm not an expert, but I would think that any cost savings over shipping by boat would be so minimal as to make the huge initial expenditure not worth it. Think of the cost of a single locomotive that was made to run on 47 foot wide rails, and the engine(s) it would need to move such heavy loads. While this plan might be nice to dream about, it probably isn't feasible, and you definately will never see it.

[Hugh Jampton]

Is it April Fools already??

[cstaats]

Coast of construction makes it impracticable.

[TH&B]

Why make a train wider for furniture and commodities? When you could make trains infanately longer and heavier with modern materials and technoloigy at a much lower cost. Piggybacking ships sounds very inefficient.

47 foot gauge would make a huge frontal area and would increase wind resistance and therefore not have any fuel savings.

[Isambard]

It's great to see that someone still has the ability to think outside the box (or the existing rails in this case).

[Anonymous]

Cool idea, but of course it's not practicle.

Think of the money it would take to build the infrastructure and land that would have to be used in order to build this right-of-way.

The government would have to be kicking a lot of people out of their homes, that's for sure.

[Anonymous]

The sound of one that knows how to dream is the greatest compliment to human immagination

[Train Guy 3]

I think I'll stay with the good ol' 4'-8.5".

[BaltACD]

I would hate to think about what kind of equipment would be needed to handle such equipment in a derailment....and there will be derailments.

The boy needs to down a few more pints and smoke some more rope and the toke some LSD....all that may bring some sense to his gray matter.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by BaltACD

I would hate to think about what kind of equipment would be needed to handle such equipment in a derailment....and there will be derailments.

The boy needs to down a few more pints and smoke some more rope and the toke some LSD....all that may bring some sense to his gray matter.

That's a really good point, I never thought about that.

Could you imagine the size of the crane needed to lift that thing?

Not to mention how on earth they would get the crane to the site.

[DSchmitt]

A number of years ago there was an article in Trains Magazine proposing very wide gauge trains. The proposal was to modify existing double track lines and laying new double track lines so that the outside rails on each track could be used to operate wide gauge cars and locos. Standard gauge trains could still be run on each track. The illistrations also showed standard gauge locos pulling wide gauge cars, and standard and wide cars in the same train.

[:)]The article is "The Case For the Double-Track Train" March 1976 Trains page 28.
Since I read it once, I must have that issue somewhere, but its not where it belongs in my collerction[:(] I think the proposed gauge was about 20'

On a narrower note there was "Hitler's Super Railway" August 1984 Trains page 38
A track gauge of up to 4 meters (approx 13') was discussed for this proposal.

[Modelcar]

....I subscribe to the side: It is good to have some thinking outside the box on all kinds of situations. This situation though sounds like an impossibility. Large ships loaded onto rail vehicles of a sort with GvW so large I doubt if that much load could be hauled over grades encountered. And some grades would be necessary....as we know there are ranges of mountains in the west and of course the eastern ranges as well. Just not feasible. And of curse other concerns some of which are listed above in previous posts.

[espeefoamer]

Pass that doobie over here, I want a hit of that![(-D]

[Anonymous]

This thread got me thinking about a thread that popped up here a few months ago, wasn't there a "fantastic" sitcom at one point about a passenger train that ran on a very wide gauge, the name escapes me at the moment....

Supertrain or something?

[espeefoamer]

Yes,the show was called Supertrain.It was a wide gauge. The show did not last very long.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by espeefoamer

Yes,the show was called Supertrain.It was a wide gauge. The show did not last very long.

Yeah, that's the one, I never saw an episode, it was all before my time, but it sure would be neat to see a few.....

Surely someone has them on tape somewhere... [:D]

[FJ and G]

John L. Stephenson, a NY lawyer and quondam RR promoter (also an
antiquarian, traveller, and travel writer) promoted a double-track RR
across the Isthmus of Panama for steamships in the 1850s. Can you imagine
hauling the USS Eisenhower from ocean to ocean by rail? And made out of what?

Dave Vergun

[Hugh Jampton]

erm,,, I don't think the idea is to move the whole ship, just its contents.

[CShaveRR]

You have to not only look at the width of such a track (and think about the width of a multiple-track main line, with ships passing in the night...), but what about height? To handle a ship on a flat car would require tremendous vertical clearances. All grade separations would put this railroad on top, but what about power lines and other such things?

[Modelcar]

....Just not practical. As for hauling freight off ships across Panama, I believe there is an updated railroad in place right now that could do much of that.

[vsmith]

This idea was 1st proposed back in the 19th century as an alternative to..

A. The Suez Canal and later...

B. The Panama Canal.

Both times greate drawings were presented with teams of steam locomotives lashed up together like the Budwieser Clydesdales hauling huge steamship across the landscape.

Both times it was deamed pure lunacy and never attempted.

[SALfan]

I can (barely) imagine the amount of howling such a super-railroad would cause from the NIMBY's, BANANA's (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone), tree-huggers, California fruits and nuts, and other mindless members of the professionally-offended class. Speaking from my own experience, there would be riots in the streets of the People's Republic of Maryland if anyone even proposed such a thing (despite the fact that overall such trains would probably be more environmentally friendly than present-day freight trains and trucks). It would be politically impossible to get such trains anywhere near any decent harbor near a population center on either coast. Good idea in a perfect world, but in the real world it will never happen.

[TH&B]

Tell me, what in the world would be the advantage of building such a railway ???
I don't see any. If you could even afford to build such a railroad then you could also easily afford the removal of virtualy all level crossings and build super long sidings or double track and run any length train you desire standard gauge. Smooth out the 4'-8.5" track and increase axle load for a fraction of the cost of a crazy super size railway. Entire ship loads could be moved in one train standard gauge. Covered cars could be close coupled to reduce wind resistance far better then some ridiculus wide and tall train.
So again I still don't see why wide gauge ?!

[Hugh Jampton]

I wonder what the axle load would be. More than the strength of the steel no doubt. Ahhh,, that makes it impossible then.

[Anonymous]

a modern aircraft carrier displaces over 200,000 tons, when moving at top speed of around fifty knots, they take about twenty miles to stop! and that's give'n her everyth'n sh's got cap'n! To achieve this speed an expenditure of more than 160,000 horsepower is needed. Freight ships are economicle because of their size, the speed they travel - 12 knots, the distances they travel uninterupted, and the fuel that they burn is basically tar. This train may not be as big, but with such scale there is a loss of flexibility.

The standard guage actually goes back to the roman times, it is the average width of two horse's asses.

[Anonymous]

Oh, I should fini***hat thought. The romans built all the roads, and any axel built to a diferent width won't track correctly on the road and wear out quickly.

[Puckdropper]

I don't think such a wide gauge is anywhere near practical. Now, one of the proposed advantages got me thinking... Truck trailers could be unloaded from TOFC flat cars by truck if you (1) bridge the gap between platforms so it's even and (2) build up the pavement (or build down the rails) so the platform matches the road. A driver would simply then pick up the trailer and drive off with it.

[Anonymous]

I can't imagine a 47 foot wide track. of course, I can't imagine this space Elivator nasa has proposed to replace shuttles with. one big question. nnot only would air resistance add to the amount of fuel cost, but the fact that a much bigger unit with a much heavier load add to even more fuel usage. this would not help the enviroment. one nice thing about 4' 8.5" is its flexability too. you could build a line this guage almost anywhere.

And also to point out. slabs of metal on ties or rocks that parralleled them WERE rail in the 1800s, why go back to an old type of rail, if it was proven not as viable?