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[quote user="carnej1"] [quote user="Bucyrus"] [quote user="carnej1"]  This is the latest of several threads where there has been debate about the adequacy and inadequacy of standard gauge particularly in North America...and  again I'm struck by the position some have that articulated, doublestack well cars, multilevel vehicle carriers (autoracks) and 286,000 lbs. gross bulk cars are in some way "too small"....I don't know how, objectively, one can talk about an "ideal gauge" and I'm sure a civil engineer would not look at it this way...Loading gauge is what is important in the real world... [/quote] But loading gage has a relationship with track gage.  They are not independent of each other. [/quote]...In the real world of actual railroad companies the significant increases in loading gauge have allowed larger and larger equipment which is one way that capacities have increased. Debates about how wide apart the rails should be had validity back when the Erie RR was built (to 5 foot gauge) but in the 21st century standard gauge is considered the best practice for heavy haul and HSR in much of the world and these "wouldn't it be great if we had an X foot super broad gauge system"arguments strike me as akin to the Medeival philosophers who engaged in serious arguments about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Of course standard gauge is not "perfect" but to quote the old General "perfect is the enemy of good enough".. [/quote] That is all true, but it does not address the question of this thread.  I agree that arguments about the perfect gage were valid back in the pioneering era.  Not only were they valid then, but they were deadly serious as well.  The wrong choice could ruin the investment.  And the right choice required predicting the future; and not just the actual future traffic, but the subjectively guided human consensus as well.  Back then, gage was defended like ideology, spawning terms like “gage war.”  <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p> Standard gage is considered best practice today only because there is no practical alternative. There simply could be no engineering/economic argument that we should actually change standard gage.  That horse has left the barn.  And I agree that there is great truth in the saying that "perfect is the enemy of good enough.”  But I have a saying that, “Standard is the enemy of perfect.”  <o:p></o:p> So while the question of optimum gage was an essential, practical question in the pioneering era, that does not mean that the question does not still exist today.  It may only be an academic question today, but so what?    Increases in capacity have indeed been raised by increasing the loading gage, as you say, but it has about reached its limit.  And that limit is track gage.  So I submit that today’s traffic levels have reached a point where they put pressure on raising the track gage if it were possible to do so.
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