Surfstud31 wrote:I just heard this on the history channel and couldn't believe it. The question is, how did U.S. railroads decide on the standard distance of 4' 8 1/2" between rails?
You know, no one has actually answered the lead question of this thread!
Abraham Lincoln actually decided on standard gauge for the United States, when he signed the Transcontinental Railroad Act into law in 1863 which mandated, among other things, a gauge of 4' 8-1/2". Before then, there were well over a dozen different loading gauges in this country, from 2' to 6' wide. After the Transcon was installed, all other roads had to either convert, go bankrupt, or be in such a niche as to not care.
Oh; Lincoln was a lawyer for the Illinois Central Railroad before he started his career as a politician. The IC was built from the start at 4' 8-1/2".
Ray Breyer
Modeling the NKP's Peoria Division, circa 1943
Hoo-boy Dave. You've got a typically European view of how America has evolved. We're so radically different from your own history and experiences that most Euros simply can't wrap their heads around it. To wit:
Dave-the-Train wrote:Historically you need to add to this that for the US as well as Europe draft animals provided most power to move anything up to 1940...
Definitely not true of the USA. By the double whammy of the Depression and the Dust Bowl, horses and mules were essentially a thing of the past, and mostly only found in VERY backwards areas of the South (and usually confined to use by minorities). The United States motorized FAST. By the time we entered WWI most of the Doughboys knew how to drive, wheras Europeans up through WWII had to take special courses in all things mechanical. By 1930 we had the starts of NASCAR, hot rods, and monster trucks, and virtually all farms either had, or were quickly saving for, tractors and a model T. Remember, the USA was the first nation to DRIVE to the poorhouse (the Great Depression). In fact, the Dust Bowl was caused BY tractors and plows, not horses and plows.
Even the USA was not an internal combustion engine economy until after 1945. probably the biggest shift to an IC economy came from all the redundent jeeps and army trucks...
There really was never a glut of surplus Army vehicles in civilian hands in this country. We didn't want them, as they reminded us of the latest crappy war we had to bail Europe out of. The VAST majority of military vehicles (800,000 Jeeps, for instance) were either scrapped, kept in the rolls, or sold off to rebuilding nations. You can see this in the photos of the time: if there was a huge number of military vehicles converting the USA into a motorized society between 1945 and 1950, why don't they show up in photos? (refer to the Charles Cushman collection for examples).
The USA was an internal combustion economy by 1925.
also the system had geared up to producing them...
The term "arsenal of Democracy" is no myth. And the reason we WERE the arsenal was because we already HAD the production capabilities to supply a global war, or we could build it QUICKLY. Euros tend to overlook just how FAST we Americans can do things when we really put our minds to it. Even Speer couldn't hope to match ANY of our production numbers.
and both tyres that didn't puncture too easily and slip-paved concrete highways...
Neither bothered us nor stopped us from buying cars. There are LOTS of accounts about cross state travel being counted in the number of punctures the driver had to fix. Model T's came with their own tire repair kit and air pump (manual, of course) as standard equipment. As for paved roads, we had millions of people to put to work during the Depression. Know what the CCC and WPA was doing? Paving roads (asphalt and concrete)
Any increase in size... like from a 40' to a 50' standard box car is not just a matter of making bigger cars. the loading doors on trackside platforms fo warehouses have been built for 40'cars. Tracks are designed to take the heaviset cars of their time.
True for Europe, not for America. Here in the USA we don't care about tradition, history, or the "way it's always been done." Give us profit, newness, and effiencicy. Bigger cars mean less money the railroads have to spend (fewer axle sets for the same length of train, and less friction from fewer axles). The shippers don't care, because most of them won't be around in five years. Those that will be will tear down and build new factories, or will at least knock new holes in existing walls for new doors.
No-one in the 1800s imagines that we would want to run mile long trains of 100ton coal cars... if you'd suggested it they'd have locked you up in the funny farm.
Not true by the end of the 1800s. The entire Mallet concept was embraced by American roads mostly to lower the number of crews required to fuel the drag freight theory of railroading. The Pennsy was famous for this: got to drag a mile long train over Horseshoe Curve? Start hanging 2-10-0s on it until it moved. The ALTON, of all roads, bought 2-6-6-2s in 1906 to use as drag freight engines. American roads had dreamed of mile long freights since the Civil War (ours), and were just waiting for technology to catch up. Short, fast, frequent freights is a more modern thought.
In Britain and Europe ... and America... we kept using horses because we knew horses, horses were available (we knew how to make new ones ourselves and didn't have to go and buy a new one) we could grow their fuel and they did the job in horse sized lumps which were sufficient.
In Europe yes. In America, no. In WWII every European military went to war with horse cavalry, horse drawn artillery, and horse drawn supply trains. By 1938 the US Army was motorizing the entire cavalry arm as quickly as possible (the Artillery was done by 1934, and the Transportation Corps by 1936: I've got the TO&E for all those years). The Army retired the horse cavalry in 1943, with the last mounted actions occuring in the Phillippines in 1942 in Battaan (Philipino cavalry with American officers). We used mules in the Pacific only because we couldn't build helicopters fast enough (yes, the Marines used transport helicopters in WWII).
Vehicles scared the average European in WWII, and they didn't know how to use, drive, or maintain them. German vehicles sucked, and they broke down frequently. If a motor pool unit wasn't handy, they'd just abandon them in place. In the American army, most members knew how to drive, and most had owned a vehicle at some point in their lives. There were enough backyard mechanics in the leg infantry that ANY vehicle could be put back into the line within 24 hours, up to and including burnt-out Shermans.
And horses are MORE expensive than a model T. Henry Ford designed them that way. Before the T, nobody but rich farmers owned more than a single mid-sized draft horse, which was ONLY used to plow. Nobody (in the grand scheme of things) rode, nobody drove, and not many people knew how to do either (especially in the urbanized and industrialized north east). CARS gave us a sense of security, affordability, and most importantly, MOBILITY that the world had never seen before.
We won in europe in part at least because the new internal combustion engine technology had come of age...
It had come of age in the USA by the end of WWI. I ha
Surfstud31 wrote:The history channel said it comes from the distance between the wheels on a Roman chariot. I never heard such a thing and I couldn't believe it!
I especially enjoy the chariot touch. Except for racing (ala Ben Hur) and processions in Rome, the Romans didn't use chariots.
Enjoy
Paul
Orsonroy
Thanks for the great answer.
I must admit that I slipped up badly and over generalised. I don't think that this is the place to go into a li=ong discussion correcting/debating the points ... but I will print off our two posts and have a good look at them.
Two things I would note...
First. Every time the questions of when covered hoppers came into use or boxcars stopped being used for grain comes up part of the reason given for the long changeover time is that the further reaches of the rail system couldn't handle cars over a certain size and that a lot of elevators were restricted in what they could handle.
Second. The US didn't rescue Europe from a a lousy war of purely European making. IIRC the USA came into the conflict after Pearl Harbour. Both World Wars were the products of history in the same way that Greece, Rome and other Empires declined... and later empires rose.
I think that to discuss other points here would tend to become too open to political interpretation and way too far off topic.
I certainly fnd your perspective interesting and hope that, however "wrong" it may seem, my (rather sketchy / generalised) run down of most of a century is of some interest to you. One interesting thing is that we are (theoretically) both democracies and "on the same side... If we have such varied views of the same thing what goes on when people have a completely different starting point for their view of the world?
And all this was caused by the Romans putting the wheels on their chariots! ...or not
AT THE VERY LEAST:
Whether 'Point' - 'Counterpoint' or 'Subjective - objectivity' -
this subject makes an outstanding example of what 'Reverse Engineering' is all about.
There's a well-researched study at: http://tafkac.org/misc/railroad_gauge.html
I quote herewith:
Well I'm sure if you wandered over to a newsgroup full of railway archeology enthusiasts, you would find that at the time steam trains were first being developed there were a very large number of "standard" gauges in use. Oh god I'm going to be sad and find a book for the A.F.U. maxim to provide references....
First reference that springs to hand : O.S.Nock, World Atlas of Railways, 1978 (ISBN:086134 003 5). Chapter 1. Goes into great length about the use of (horse/human powered) railways in mines in England/Germany 18th century ...hmm, several gauges and types of rail mentioned...19th century...blaa blaa Stockton & Darlington blaa blaa; first Russian railway 6ft; GWR (england, brunel) 7ft 1/4 inch; "1846: Despite the difficulties that had arisen in England from a _diversity_ (my emphasis) of rail gagues, in North America many lines were built in the early days with different gauges both in Canada and in the USA. In the latter the situation was not finally resolved until after the end of the Civil War, when some lines in the southern states were converted to the European and N.American standard of 1,435 mm (4ft 8 1/2 inches)". Talk about the 1840's "Guage War".
Okay not early enough for what you want...Lets try Railway Archaeology, O.S.Nock, 1981 (no ISBN). Chapter 1. First railways, Causey Arch, 1725 (!), [102 foot span stone bridge] "2 tracks of 4 feet gauge abreast of each other...woodern rails 6 to 7 inches wide by 5 inches deep, spaced to provide a rail gauge of 4 feet." - This is cited in the middle of long discussion about the use of early railways/plateways in the transportation of mining.
What else? J.B.Snell, Early Railways, 1964, (no ISBN). Oh this is better. Opening paragraph : "There are 2 elements in the definition of a railway. One is the specially prepared track, designed to carry heavy loads with reduced friction; the other is the system of guidance which makes it unnecessary for vehicles to be steered. Defined in this way, railways are very much older than most people realise. One of the differences between ++GREEKS++ and ++ROMANS++ was that, while the Romans laboured greatly to build roads all over Europe, the Greeks characteristically saw no reason why they should go to the troble of forming flat stone surfaces ten feet side or more when two narrow ruts carved into the rock would serve the purpose. _These_ rutways were the ancestors of railways; they provided a smooth and relatively friction-free running surface, combined with guidance for the wheels. From remains in various places around the Mediterranean it can be seen that their engineering was also quite sophisticated. There were sidings and passing loops, and the tracks ran wherever possible along contours to preserve a level grade."...Lots more talk about 17th century feeder railways for the canals...Richard Trevithick builds first steam powered locomotive 1804 on a plateway with a 4' 2" gauge...Wylan railway 5' gauge...etc etc ...mention is made that R.Stephenson (fan of 4'8" cos that was the one he used) built several locos for export to the USA for the first railways (only one ever made it there though, reliability not being too high...)
So maybe you should blame the Greeks not the Romans? :-)
One last reference as we still haven't got a satisfactory answer as to where Robert Stephenson got 4'8" from...Jack Simmons "The Railways of Britain" 1961+1986 (ISBN 0-333-41990-1) chap.1 (again) "The expansion of the railways encountered some difficult problems. The tacks had not been constructed to a single gauge. In the early days several had been tried. The 4'8" of the northern coal lines, _adopted in the days of horse traction_, had always been used by the Stephensons, and it _ruled without question throughout the North of England_ and, with some exceptions, in Scotland. But as engineers began to think about railways in the 1830's, this gauge encountered its critics. That it had been _found suitable_, by _long experience_, for _horses working on colliery lines_ did not prove its fitness for the steam locomotive...blaa blaa Brunel again... Ireland adopted the gauge of 5' 3", still standard today. [Oooh this has a reference : "The Stephensons' 4'8" prevailed over most of Europe, though wider gauges were adopted in Russia (5') and Spain (5'6"). The USA showed a remarkable _diversity_ of gauges, from 4'8 1/2" to 6', and this diversity proveded a serious handicap to its economnic development - see G.R.Taylor and I.D.Neu, "The American Railroad Network, 1861-90" (1956) and, for a general survey, L.Day, "Broad Gauge" (1985)]
So we have some evidence that the northern coal workings, which are very near (part of) Hadrian's Wall, used 4'8" because that worked best with horses pulling coal waggons. But the Romans built smooth roads, not rutways, even if over 1000 years earlier. And I can say from personal experience that traditional agricultural carts and other horse-drawn carriages built in Southern England are all sorts of different width - every area had its own style.
I also think the comments about Roman War Chariots are way out. I'm not convinced they were built to one standard, but anyway, the Romans kept their roads smooth. After the Romans "left", we had the "dark ages" (note the quotes!), during which time there would have only been a small amount of cart-traffic (in comparison to the Roman period), of short distance to market-towns mostly, so a standardised rut would have had great trouble developing! But this is definatly better discussed with your Classics group.
And where I live (Buckinghamshire) there are lots and lots of medieval tracks, the biggest being the "Ridgeway". There is no tradition of building 4'8" gauge carts, though...
p.s. Re: the big railway discussion above - I got a lot of train books when I was a kiddy, I had to find them in a box in the attic, OK?
Richard "So my great-grandfather was a surveyor on the first trans-Canada railway, but we don't think _he_ was responsible for dynamiting the salmon runs..." B. -- Richard Bowles.
From: nobody@roadie.demon.co.uk Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban Subject: Re: Roman RR Ruts Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 23:52:22 GMT
In message <1996Oct16.093435@vms.ocom.okstate.edu> you scribbled:
> ISTR reading a railway history book that attributed Stephenson's gauge to > the fact that he was employed in the Northumbrian coal fields ( way aye mun > ) early in his career (Wylam???) and the coal master was a "fan" of Ancient > Rome ( especially with Hadrian's Wall being near by) and the mines were all > gauged to 4ft 8.5 inches. Of course early ironways were horse drawn so the > physical requirements would be similar to Roman chariots....
Did I say in my earlier post that it was *originaly* 4ft 8 inches, the extra 1/2 inch was only added in the 1840's because of problems with flanges and friction (there are whole chapters on different ways of making wheels move along some sort of pre-laid guidance system...and that's not me being silly with words just pointing out that there are a lot of other ways than outer-flanged wheels on tracks shaped like wot you know now...) Unfortunatly none of them really talk about *why* Stephenson settled on 4'8" beyond it was the one used at Killingworth which was where he worked before starting the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1821 [...look what you've made me do, I've got one of my books out again...]
"George Stephenson was born in 1781, in a house which still stands beside Wylan railway..." that's his only connection given with that line...
"William Hedley, of the Wylam colliery, a few miles west of Newcastle, was the next man to build a locomotive. The Wylam Railway, a wooden line of great antiquity, had justbeen rebuilt as a FIVE-FOOT gauge PLATEWAY, and for it in 1813 Hedley built his famous Puffing Billy...." "...around 1830 the Wylam line was rebuilt as a FIVE-FOOT gauge RAILWAY..."
Also, because it is said in great length and I'm not going to type in several pages of stuff, that what the TRACK is made of determines the axle width - metal rails only became practical around the turn of the century (1800's) as manufacturing techniques improved, and wooden rails had to be much thicker, hence the distance between wheels was less than that for the same size waggon/cart on metal rails.
Early mining railways were *not* all 4'8" (I said this last time I'm sure), *not* all in Northumberland (South Wales, Germany, France...) and Hadrians Wall could hardly be cited as making someone want to copy a system that the romans may-or-may-not have used - and to the 1/2 inch?! - If the people on the Classics list can't answer that one do you really expect someone in 17th/18th century northern england to know something so obscure?. I did however say that 4'8" (not 4'8.5"!) had been found to be a good compromise with horse-drawn carts...but a cart-horse is a very different size to a pit-ponies, and inside the mines humans provided much of the motive power...
If anyone is in York (UK, yes, "Old" York) they could go to the National Railway Museum which I believe has quite a bit on different railway gauges; and then there is Beamish Open-Air Museum near Durham which has a bit on early Northumbrian mining and railways (although its probably buried under mounds of Victoriana and trams to please the kiddies...)
...and I don't think Julius Caesar (etc) would be very impressed with your statement that war chariots were coal trucks! _Please_ go and find a picture of each of these and play "spot the difference"...! (e.g. wheels, number, size, location, thereof; construction; use; contents; method of connection to the motive power; number of horses; etc etc)
vsmith wrote: To add to Marks commentsthe Stockton and Darlington wagon carts, like most trams at the time, were built to haul coal or slate, a heavy commodities. If the wagons were too wide, the axle split, if they were too big, the horse couldnt pull it. So over the years from the time they were started, the cart builders came up with A: a cart that was wide enought to carry a decent load without breaking, B; that was small enough for a horse to pull, and in doing so came up with a wheel gauge that accomodated the largest wooden axle that could carry the load, and still allow a horse to walk between the rails without stumbling on the wooden rails, I firmly beleive it had nothing to do with chariots are anything like that, but that it was a horses backside that gave us 4 ' 8 1/2", it was just a trail and error guage that worked, and it stuck.
Ignoring the fact that the reasons were probably not reasons but chance and it's all lost in the mists of time...
It's interesting that you mix coal and slate... The Stockton and Darlington was a coal road and one of the roads that - somehow or other - resulted in us having standard gauge.
On the other hand the Ffestiniog Railway was built as a 60cm line to get Welsh Slate down a twisty turny route from the quarries at Bleanau Ffestiniog to Porth Madog on the coast using gravity all the way. The wagons were hauled back up to the quarries by horses walking in the 2'way... there's photos of them doing it. Once at the top the horses rode back to the harbour in end-loaded horse cars that were tacked on the back of a string of loaded slate wagons. Traffic grew so much that steam locos were introduced for the uphill run. The experts of the day said that they couldn't even work let alone do the job required. (Interesting when you see a South African Rly NG G16 at work... It's a 2-6-2 + 2-6-2 Garratt... about the biggest 2' gauge loco in regular fleet service in the world).
Welsh slate railways varied in gauge from 60cm through 2' and 2'3" to 2'4.25". The Welshpool and Llanfair was also 2'6". As far as I know all other non-pleasure railways in Wales were standard gauge. There have been several 15" gauge "toy" railways.
OOPS! The Dinorwic Quarries also had 2 (IIRC) 4' gauge steam locos that hauled 60cm gauge slate trams on transporter wagons. One of these locos was bricked into its shed and lost for many years only to be discovered and now preserved.
I think that a committee probably sat around pondering what gauge would cause the most confusion and difficulty to explain... they're probably still in session somewhere in the depths of the Pentagon or on Capitol Hill. Meanwhile standard gauge was just an accident.
Dave-the-Train wrote:...historically you need to add to this that for the US as well as Europe draft animals provided most power to move anything up to 1940... with the trains picking up where horses, mules, oxen and donkeys left off. Even the USA was not an internal combustion engine economy until after 1945...
...historically you need to add to this that for the US as well as Europe draft animals provided most power to move anything up to 1940... with the trains picking up where horses, mules, oxen and donkeys left off. Even the USA was not an internal combustion engine economy until after 1945...
63,000 cars were sold in the US in 1908, 356,000 in 1912, and 900,000 in 1915. In 1917, when motor carriers were brought under regulation in California, 500 separate bus companies filed their tariffs with the regulatory commission. In 1916 there were 326,000 trucks registered in the US, by 1926 there were 2,766,222...
My reference for these figures is "The Electric Interurban Railways in America", by Professor George W. Hilton.
Cheers,
Mark.
The gauges used in India are 5'6", metre, 2'6" and 2'. There is no standard gauge there. Metre gauge was chosen in 1872 by the Viceroy, Lord Mayo. A draft bill was before the Indian Government at that time to introduce metric weights and measure, so metre gauge was chosen to conform with this proposal. It was, however, another 86 years before India went metric.
The main gauges used in Australia are 5'3", standard, 3'6" and 2'. The name "Ghan" originated during the laying of the south to north line to Alice Springs, not the Transcontinental line from east to west.