Murphy Siding wrote: The other thing that keeps popping up is the narrow gauge issue. As I read it, railroads built narrow gauge to save money. They could build them cheaper, with tighter turns, and apparantly(?) steeper grades(?) Later, when some of the lines were standard gauged, it would seem like an engineering mess on some of the lines. I'm not sure how you'd retroactively fix tight turns and steep grades.
Converting lines from narrow to standard gage was a mess, but so was the realignment and general upgrades made to many standard gage lines as their business took off.
I have some random thoughts about the choice of gage, starting with my belief that there is no gage that is fundamentally superior or inferior to any other as long as it is ideally matched to its purpose. Eventually a consensus developed around a gage of 56-1/2" to meet the average purpose. In the beginning, however, everybody had a different idea about what the ideal gage should be. Some thought 56-1/2" was too narrow, and some thought 24" was wide enough.
The argument simply revolved around matching the capacity of the plant (the size of train and track) to the transportation job. Excessive size/capacity was deemed a waste of resources. The decision was exacerbated by not knowing what the future need would be, considering the inflexibility of changing gage once a line was built.
Because railroads provide for long, self-guiding vehicles, if you have a choice in making the vehicle wide or narrow, it makes sense to make it narrow. To carry the same load in a wider, but shorter vehicle requires a wider track all the way, and the majority of the plant cost is in the track and earthwork. Thus the motive was to achieve the largest train capacity on the narrowest track and roadbed.
Therefore, as the gage concept narrowed, the tendency was to narrow the track disproportionately more than the train. The resulting increase in overhang led to charges by the larger gage advocates that narrow gage had problems with stability. In fact the objective of stability seems to have played a big part in the choice of gages of six feet or more, which was seen as a way to minimize overhang as much as its ability to increase capacity. This broad gage school regarded 56-1/2" as narrow gage, and argued against it just as the 56-1/2" advocates argued against gages such as 36."
The plot really thickened when railroads became so numerous that they connected, and thus found the advantage of interchangeability as an alternative to breaking bulk. Then with that development, in addition to the objective of matching the scale of the plant to the size of the task, there was the hope of choosing a gage that would eventually become standard with all other lines, coupled with the speculation about what that consensus gage would end up being. So, not only was building a railroad faced with the difficulty of financing and construction, but also it required the commitment to selecting a gage that not only matched its transportation task at the time of construction and into the future, but also matched the anticipated future gage of its interchanging lines.
Bucyrus:
Your logic is sound, though I think arguing that so long as the gauge is ideally matched to its purpose the specifics of the gauge are of no matter, leaves unanswered the more important question about purpose. Also, I am not aware that narrow-gauge created any significant stability problems. I don't recall that in any of my old engineering texts. Aren't there some high-speed lines that are less than standard-gauge?
I agree that prior to the Civil War the technology and the industry was immature and it was not ignorant or incorrect to have reasonable differences of opinion about the prior gauge. But by the 1870s, when the D&RG was incorporated, the technology and culture of railways was fully mature and almost the only plausible rationale for narrow-gauge was if the railway was conceived as a short-term get-rich scheme with no intent of economic development of the territory. For a one-shot mining road like the Eureka & Palisade or White Pass & Yukon, deep in a territory that would obviously never support agriculture or manufacturing, narrow-gauge was a reasonable choice as a means to strip an ore body of its riches and withdraw. To lay narrow-gauge in Ohio or Iowa after even 1860 was idiocy. At that time the industry was already a half-century old and there was no excuse for being innocent of the paradigms. It would be as if Boeing announced their 797 would be built from fabric and sprucewood spars in order to save a little bit on materials.
RWM
Railway Man wrote: Bucyrus:Your logic is sound, though I think arguing that so long as the gauge is ideally matched to its purpose the specifics of the gauge are of no matter, leaves unanswered the more important question about purpose. Also, I am not aware that narrow-gauge created any significant stability problems. I don't recall that in any of my old engineering texts. Aren't there some high-speed lines that are less than standard-gauge?I agree that prior to the Civil War the technology and the industry was immature and it was not ignorant or incorrect to have reasonable differences of opinion about the prior gauge. But by the 1870s, when the D&RG was incorporated, the technology and culture of railways was fully mature and almost the only plausible rationale for narrow-gauge was if the railway was conceived as a short-term get-rich scheme with no intent of economic development of the territory. For a one-shot mining road like the Eureka & Palisade or White Pass & Yukon, deep in a territory that would obviously never support agriculture or manufacturing, narrow-gauge was a reasonable choice as a means to strip an ore body of its riches and withdraw. To lay narrow-gauge in Ohio or Iowa after even 1860 was idiocy. At that time the industry was already a half-century old and there was no excuse for being innocent of the paradigms. It would be as if Boeing announced their 797 would be built from fabric and sprucewood spars in order to save a little bit on materials. RWM
The stability I am referring to is the issue of increasing overhang (as a percentage of gage) as the gage is reduced. I don't think that it was ever a practical problem because it was adequately offset by lowering the center of gravity. The two-foot-gage lines seemed to be the ultimate test of how much overhang was possible, and I recall reading that they ran passenger trains up to 60 mph. The issue of stability was mostly just a claim that anyone could make to support a wider gage. Although, I also recall reading in The Main Two-Footers about a passenger train that completely tipped over while standing still on a super-elevated curve. I do recall reading a few oblique references to the charge of narrow gage instability in the tally of wrecks published in the Railroad Gazette. In some cases where equipment tipped over with seemingly unusual ease, they mentioned that the line was narrow gage as if to explain the accident with the implication of instability.
I agree that when I mentioned matching gage to purpose, the bigger challenge is quantifying purpose. And purpose would also include compatibility, which naturally grows more necessary as systems develop, and ultimately usually eclipses the parts of purpose that deal with traffic, location, etc. I would guess that if the dictates of compatibility were somehow magically suspended, American gage would have continued to grow just as all the other physical attributes of trains and tracks have.
I think the reports of trains tipping over and the report that "it was narrow-gauge" was a sarcastic inference to the usual lackadaisical approach to safety, maintenance, and efficiency of the narrow-gauge lines, not an issue with the physics. D&RG narrow-gauge track maintenance standards could be written down in three words: "We don't bother." The trade press considered the narrow-gauge lines as something between embarrassment and excrescence.
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