?Longest route over the shortest distance?

[diningcar]

Have we considered the Denver and Rio Grande line from Denver to Walsenburg, to Alamosa, Antonito, Chalma, Durango and Silverton. 

[Former Car Maintainer]

abdkl

From the Friends of Mt. Tam site:

Construction details

The original railroad road bed of the Mill Valley & Mt. Tamalpais Scenic Railway was 8.19 miles long with 22 trestles and 281 curves.  The longest straight stretch was in the middle of the Double Bow Knot, the halfway point, a distance of 413 feet.  The rails were 57 pound steel with redwood ties. Work crews averaged 200 men, mostly European immigrants, who carved the railroad grade by hand with picks, shovels, wheelbarrows and blasting powder from mountain rock. The cost of construction was reported to be $55,000, with another $80,000 for equipment.  Original equipment consisted of one Shay engine of 20 tons, one Heisler engine of 30 tons, six open canopied cars, one San Francisco cable car and two flat cars. Regular operations began August 27, 1896.  The grade averaged 5% while the steepest part, just down the grade from the summit a short distance, was a “modest” 7%.

https://www.friendsofmttam.org/railroad/history.html

 

 

You forgot to mention the gravity cars....

[abdkl]

From the Friends of Mt. Tam site:

Construction details

The original railroad road bed of the Mill Valley & Mt. Tamalpais Scenic Railway was 8.19 miles long with 22 trestles and 281 curves.  The longest straight stretch was in the middle of the Double Bow Knot, the halfway point, a distance of 413 feet.  The rails were 57 pound steel with redwood ties. Work crews averaged 200 men, mostly European immigrants, who carved the railroad grade by hand with picks, shovels, wheelbarrows and blasting powder from mountain rock. The cost of construction was reported to be $55,000, with another $80,000 for equipment.  Original equipment consisted of one Shay engine of 20 tons, one Heisler engine of 30 tons, six open canopied cars, one San Francisco cable car and two flat cars. Regular operations began August 27, 1896.  The grade averaged 5% while the steepest part, just down the grade from the summit a short distance, was a “modest” 7%.

https://www.friendsofmttam.org/railroad/history.html

 

[wjstix]

Originally the Northern Pacific route from the Twin Cities to Duluth involved going to Staples and then turning east and taking the original NP mainline to get to Duluth. Their route was something like 300 miles; eventually in 1900 they bought the St.Paul & Duluth RR whose direct route was only about 150 miles.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

In the United States, I would nominate Manitou & Pikes Peak or the Mount Washington Cog RR.  There would be numerous contenders in Europe and elsewhere.

[Former Car Maintainer]

Boyd

What RR line in the past or present has the longest route in track miles going the shortest distance as the crow flies? I'm guessing it would be in a hilly or mountainous area.

 

Or the highest elevation over the shortest distance such as an incline railway?

[Former Car Maintainer]

CSSHEGEWISCH

Perhaps somebody else can fill in the details but the late Mt. Tamalpais & Muir Woods RR, the "crookedest railroad in the world", should be considered.

 

The train rose from an elevation of 300' to a peak of 2586' in a quadrant of 4mi x 5 mi. It had an eight mile marker at 2500'. The Muir Valley spur had a 2 mile marker originating from the main spur 4 mile marker. To model this system in HO, would take a space 239' by 299' by 26'high...just sayin..

or perhaps Pacific Electrics, Mount Lowe Railway

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mount_Lowe_Railway_map.jpg

[cacole]

On the now-defunct Uintah Railway in Colorado and Utah, there was a section where the trains traveled something like 10 miles to actually go less than one mile up the side of a mountain.

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

mudchicken

  .....sounds like the rock Island's epitath. 

      - PDN. 

[garr]

Paul,

 

Thanks and you're welcome.

 

Jay

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

http://www.georail.blogspot.com

I just copy and paste the URL, and then hit the space bar once - that does it almost every time for me. 

That's a pretty neat site - thanks for sharing !

- Paul North. 

[mudchicken]

.....sounds like the rock Island's epitath.

[garr]

Paul_D_North_Jr

Perhaps either the Clinchfield crossing the Alleghenies or the old L&N's "Hook & Eye" would qualify, or the SP crossing of the Siskiyous - as surmised, all mountain railroad lines. 

- Paul North. 

 

Such questions often illuminate some interesting sites on the web. In checking the Clinchfield Loops I came across http://www.georail.blogspot.com which has a number of railroad sites well documented in one location.

According to The CSX Clinchfield Route in the 21st Century by Jerry Taylor, as the crow flies there is only 1,000 between Camp 2 and the Blue Ridge Tunnel near Altapass, NC however it takes 6.5 miles of railroad track to go a little less than 2/10ths a mile.

 

Question--how can I activate a link? It seems the site used to activate automatically however every way I tried to activate the above link did not work.

 

Jay

[gbrewer]

Perhaps the Georgetown Loop in Colorado?

 

Glen Brewer

Was the Georgetown Loop a poor design?

 

[Modelcar]

doghouse

Modelcar:

I will enter a branch line.  It has long been abandoned, but is still visible for most people on this forum that know how to see ROW's from any Satellite imaging.

This was the Boswell branch of the B&O  RR I refer to.

As I said, long abandoned, but visible still for the most part.  Especially the part between Friedens, and Ralphton, Pa.  It continued on to Boswell, and then several more mining towns and on to Somerset to connect to the Somerset & Cambria line that connects {still}, to the main {now CSX}, over in Rockwood, Pa.

The part I'd suggest to check out....The ROW between Friedens, and Ralphton....That part contains...We'll call them 4 horseshoe curves almost connected together.  There is a loop that crosses a county road twice...It goes around a little rise and right back and crosses the same road, about a 100' or so distant, gaining a bit of elevation.

If anyone cares to find that location:  Go about a mi. northwest of Friedens and see if you can pick it up there.  There are a few gaps, that farmers have recovered...but very few.

 

 

WOW!  Went to google earth to take a look.  Just north of town comes one horseshoe followed by an almost 360 curve.  Wow.

Doghouse:

Hope you looked real close, as there are about 4 horseshoe curves in that area....The one stretch is shrouded by thick trees, but if you look close, you can pick out the continuing ROW.

And...I hope you were able to see the almost full circle where the track crossed the county road, and around a big circle, around a slight hill and winds right back and crosses that same road in the other direction, just a hundred ft. or so to gain a bit of altitude.

I have some pictures, right at the sight of these curves that shows a beautiful stone arch and completed with brick inside that allows a creek to flow under a fill....It still stands and looks like it might stand for decades yet.

That RR was abandoned at least...60 years ago.

[AgentKid]

Andy Cummings

Great Western Railway's route to Bracken, Sask., an ex-Canadian Pacific route that used to end at Val Marie.

Talk about your esoteric knowledge. My mother has described Val Marie, SK, after a visit in 1954 or '55, when a family friend was the Station Agent there, as officially "The Middle of Nowhere" and "The End of The Line".

Also, of important historical note is the village of Meyronne, shown on the map. The Station Agent there taught my father Morse Code, and how to be a Station Agent, in 1947.

Bruce

 

[Stourbridge Lion]

[Andy Cummings]

Currently, one that would have to rate high on the list is Great Western Railway's route to Bracken, Sask., an ex-Canadian Pacific route that used to end at Val Marie. You can get a good idea of the lay of the land here:

http://www.greatwesternrail.com/images/Map_of_GWR,FLR,RCRR.pdf

According to that map, the Altawan Sub is 65.7 miles and the Notukeu Sub is 75 miles, making it 140.7 rail miles from Shauvanon to Bracken. According to Google maps, it's a 46-mile drive. That puts the rail:highway mileage ratio at just above 3:1.

[jpwoodruff]

A couple weeks ago I rode train 6 - the California Zephyr - Emeryville
to Denver with my GPS running.  I've got some programs for mapping and
processing GPS data.

The Big Ten curve, which is near 39.85N 105.25W, uses 2.8 miles of
track to achieve 0.4 miles of easting.  This at points on the track
that look roughly tangent between legs.

At the point where the rails are closest together, the eastbound track
is about 0.13 miles from the westbound.  About 1.45 miles of track
separates those points.

John

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

I'll add a second nominee although it may not be all that convoluted: Rio Grande's Monarch Branch.  The line included a couple of lariat loops and a three-level switchback in its route, which managed to keep the ruling grade at about 4%.

[AgentKid]

While keeping one eye on the 11:00 news I thumbed through a couple of my books and found the following info. I couldn't find the exact book I was looking for, but here is what I did find about the Spiral Tunnels.

The original "Big Hill", which you could say approximated the crow fly distance, ran eight miles between Hector and Field BC. The Spiral Tunnels, finished in 1909, reduced the 4.5% grade to 2.2%, and added four more miles of track, a 50% increase. In practical terms it meant 4 period 2-8-0's could pull 710 tons up the hill, and after the tunnels were built, one 2-8-0 could lift 980 tons.

Hopefully I will find the accurate mileages tomorrow.

Bruce

 

[AgentKid]

CShaveRR

If I remember right, you could stand at one point and see the same train, at various levels, three times. 

It is too late to look up the Spiral Tunnel info tonight, but Carl's comment reminded me of another situation in Penticton, BC, on CP's former southern transcontinental line. Penticton is in a deep valley, and when an EB passenger train left the station at night the operator could stand on the platform and see the lights in the coaches pass over the crest of the mountains to the east an hour after the train left the station. This was known as the Chute Lake Hill, and consisted of long grades and many switchbacks, and was considered the steepest mainline grade on the CPR.

Bruce

 

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

diningcar

  We shall have many comparisons because what constitutes a "RR Line" has not been defined. Can it be one mile as the crow flies, twenty miles or fifty?? [snipped] 

  Worse yet, the basis for comparison has not beeen defined.  If we try to use a ratio such as the (track-miles between 2 points) / (actual horizontal distance between those same 2 points), then we'll have a couple of immediate problems wherever the track crosses over itself - the actual horizontal distance in the denominator of that fraction would be zero.  Hence, the ratio goes to infinity, and as a result all of those similar configurations are then equivalent (at least in theory), so how do we tell which one is the 'winner' ? 

A better measure to my mind is the absolute value of the excess of (the track distance between 2 points) above and beyond (the horizontal distance between those same 2 points).  That avoids the mathematical dilemma above, and in that instance it would be just the length of the loop between the crossing points - the longest loop would win in that category. 

But more generally, a really convoluted S-curve type alignment between 2 close points could easily have a greater excess distance, and so claim the winning value from one of those loop-over configurations. 

What that will lead to is some careful study and either iterative trials and solutions, and/ or close figuring of the analytical geometry of each particular configuration.  That will take the form of seeing if including 'this' loop or tangent in 'that' direction results in more or less track mileage than the horizontal distance that would then also be added, based on the length of the curvalinear shape of the track between those points as compared to the straight-line distance between the same 2 points, and so on.  It'll be real interesting to see how that is worked out and presented here . . .  

- Paul North. 

[SHKarlson]

The Beer Line in Milwaukee.  The Schlitz and Pabst loading facilities were six blocks from the Everett Street Depot, but a carload of suds destined to points south and west had to go to North Milwaukee and then to Grand Avenue and into the classification yard either on the west approach now used as Miller Park Drive or on the north approach through Cut-Off at 35th Street.

[CShaveRR]

Johnny, that's because Dave removed the link...it's fine now (not that I care about the ads on the right, but the URL link he'd posted apparently couldn't be divided, so the column was widened to fit it all in.  I'd thought reducing the font size here would help, but it apparently didn't).

[Deggesty]

CShaveRR

I would venture that the grade at Tehachapi, including the Loop, has to be the best contender for modern-day mainline traffic.

(Note to Phoebe Vet:  could you please go in and reduce the font size on your link?  It's made the columns wider than my screen!)

Tehachapi, indeed, may be the best for modern-day mainline traffic. I do not know how it is when compared to the CP's spiral tunnels.

Now, Carl, I did not see any problem with PhoebeVet's post; it was the same width as the others on my screen, which is only sixteen inch.

As to the Western North Carolina's line between Old Fort and Ridgecrest, I have always considered to to be more remarkable than the Saluda Grade. I enjoyed every trip over it, especially the last one which was a round trip in one day from Biltmore (which the Southern then called Asheville) to Salisbury and back, riding in the dome, in the summer of 1972.

[marcusen]

On the south side of the Gotthard Pass in Switzerland there are the Biaschina-Loops, which have two loops almost on top of each other--the distance traveled is about 9 kilometers with a drop in altitude of 167 meters.

[Phoebe Vet]

Carl:

It's not the font size, I think it was the link to the map.

I will go back and fix it.

[CShaveRR]

Paul, I was thinking that if that line was really, officially, the "Crookedest Railroad in the World", we'd have our answer!  Thanks for remembering it.

There was just an article in C&O History about the Nicholas, Fayette & Greenbrier's Claypool Loops.  The railroad, operated by C&O, replaced a series of switchbacks with a more circuitous through line that climbed the same grade in West Virginia without the switchbacks.  If I remember right, you could stand at one point and see the same train, at various levels, three times. 

I would venture that the grade at Tehachapi, including the Loop, has to be the best contender for modern-day mainline traffic.

(Note to Phoebe Vet:  could you please go in and reduce the font size on your link?  It's made the columns wider than my screen!)