Classic Railroad Quiz (at least 50 years old).

[daveklepper]

Louisville, KY, but Toronto's  wide-gauge is, I believe, closer to standard than Louisville's was.  But maybe you meant USA 

The largest interurban serving the city was the Indiana Railroad, and its predicessor the Interstate,  The Louisville & New Albany was an interurban with the Louisville track gauge,  The Daisy Line.

[rcdrye]

Louisville was the "normal" wide gauge - 5' 2 1/2", perhaps best known as Pennsylvania gauge, though also used in West Virginia, Ohio, Louisiana and probably elsewhere.  The system I'm looking for shared its city with one of the largest interurbans, though of course they didn't share any track.  It was around long enough to get PCCs, some of which went on to serve in other cities.

Another odd thing in the system - on the PCCs the pedal usage was backwards, with power on the left and brake on the right.

The track gauge used was close enough to standard to be the cause of a famous 19th century train wreck.

[daveklepper]

Cincinnati, 4'-9"

 

[rcdrye]

Cincinnati was Penn gauge 5' 2 1/2".  Hometown Cincinnati Car had dual-gauge track to accomodate.

As far as I can figure the gauge used came from a pre-civil war midwest railroad ("Ohio Gauge") and was carried over first with horsecars, then cable cars, and finally electrics. Mainline use of the gauge pretty much ended after a famous wreck attributed to "compromise wheels" in 1867.  There was also a hometown car builder in this city.

[Overmod]

Ohio gauge as I remember it was 4'10", not 4'9".  The 'compromise wheels' had wider treads with the flanges at 4'8.5" spacing, similar to how the Russian Decapods were converted, but the centering action on Ohio-gauge track could be insufficient.  See the description of the Angola Horror for one example.

[rcdrye]

Correct.  Like many streetcar systems with odd gauges, St. Louis stuck with its non-standard untile the end of rail operations in 1966.  Some of the PCCs went to San Francisco's Muni, first by lease, then later sale.  At least one of those has been preserved.Fortunately for Muni, PCC trucks are relatively easy to re-gauge.

[Overmod]

Frankly I had no idea there were SIX cable systems in St. Louis, and I only know that much via a throwaway line in the Wikipedia article.  Can you give some details on these?

Also mentioned was the first 'steam' traction service that had a gauge different from everybody else's at the time.  There has to be a story behind that.

Someone needs to write about the ongoing follies with United Railways and the burglary and theft of the reform petition...

[rcdrye]

George W. Hilton's monumental "The Cable Car in America" lists these systems in St. Louis:

St. Louis Cable & Western (side grip) 1887-1891

   St.L.C.&W. had a steam dummy operation on (most likely) 3 foot gauge that extended west from the cable line's end. 

Citizen's Railway (bottom grip) 1887-1894

Missouri Railroad (side grip) 1888-1901

Peoples Railway (side grip) 1890-1901

St. Louis Railroad (bottom grip) 1890-1900

All but the last were east-west systems.  St. Louis had a lot of cable mileage, maybe fourth behind San Francisco, Chicago and Kansas City.

The sixth system, the Western Cable Railway was a finite cable system used from 1891 to 1921 belonging to Lemp's Western Brewery, which crossed the St. Louis Railroad.  Technically a common carrier railroad, it was used to move boxcars from a St. Louis Iron Mountain & Southern connection, not for passengers.  It was the only St. Louis cable railway NOT built to 4'10" gauge.