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.
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
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.
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.
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.
MichaelSol wrote: ...Unfortunately, most readers come unprepared for the task, even suspending any natural analytical skills in favor of believing and perpetuating mythologies. Indeed, many come looking for such mythologies, as if it fulfills some personal need to have them, and facts be d*****. A railfan forum is probably not the place to make the observation, but the symptoms certainly show up on a regular basis, with questions being posed that clearly presume the answer the questioner wants to hear, with predictable results if the questioner hears an answer that does not confirm his romantic self-interests and an almost embarassing adulation if he does....
...Unfortunately, most readers come unprepared for the task, even suspending any natural analytical skills in favor of believing and perpetuating mythologies. Indeed, many come looking for such mythologies, as if it fulfills some personal need to have them, and facts be d*****. A railfan forum is probably not the place to make the observation, but the symptoms certainly show up on a regular basis, with questions being posed that clearly presume the answer the questioner wants to hear, with predictable results if the questioner hears an answer that does not confirm his romantic self-interests and an almost embarassing adulation if he does.
...
Michael, I think by now we get that you feel you have been hard done by of late. Could we give it a rest already and just stick to the discussion without so much editorializing? And, I am not making this observation in a vacuum; the off-line grumbling is getting harder to ignore.
-Crandell
MichaelSol wrote:D&RG is symptomatic. People want to anthropomorphize circumstance. It's a "plucky" little railroad, isn't it? "Persistant"! Well no, circumstances pretty much defined everything that happened.
I think I'd be one of the first to anthropomorphize the railroad. No matter the set of circumstances, there's still human interaction with those circumstances. I think it's a natural reaction to impart human attributes on inanimate objects because of the human element involved with those objects and the circumstances at any given moment.
While the D&RG might have been "plucky" or "persistant," I think the same can be said to any even higher degree for the RGS. There's a railroad that had no business surviving as long as it did. Circumstances certainly changed quite a bit for that railroad during it's lifetime, but the determination of the individuals associated with it kept it alive. It's just natural for me to sum up their efforts as a whole by anthropomorphizing the corporate entity that was common to them all -- so I say that the RGS was a plucky little railroad!
-ChrisWest Chicago, ILChristopher May Fine Art Photography"In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration." ~Ansel Adams
Railway Man wrote: I've read those accounts too, Chad, along with some others. The problem is context. If, for example, we had an article from a respected railway mechanical journal such as Modern Shop entitled "Advances in Diesel-Electric Maintenance through Spectrographic Analysis of Lubricating Oil," and in that article it said something like "The D&RGW, under the leadership of A.E. Perlman, was the first to investigate and employ these methods, which were then emulated by all other railroads," then we'd really be on to something. But instead, the source is a history of the D&RGW, a history whose preparation was financed by the D&RGW, and with a thesis statement that could be described as "This is the greatest railway EVER. Trust me." The source and the context is not sufficient for a reader to judge if the fact has meaning.
I've read those accounts too, Chad, along with some others. The problem is context. If, for example, we had an article from a respected railway mechanical journal such as Modern Shop entitled "Advances in Diesel-Electric Maintenance through Spectrographic Analysis of Lubricating Oil," and in that article it said something like "The D&RGW, under the leadership of A.E. Perlman, was the first to investigate and employ these methods, which were then emulated by all other railroads," then we'd really be on to something. But instead, the source is a history of the D&RGW, a history whose preparation was financed by the D&RGW, and with a thesis statement that could be described as "This is the greatest railway EVER. Trust me." The source and the context is not sufficient for a reader to judge if the fact has meaning.
Unfortunately, most readers come unprepared for the task, even suspending any natural analytical skills in favor of believing and perpetuating mythologies. Indeed, many come looking for such mythologies, as if it fulfills some personal need to have them, and facts be d*****. A railfan forum is probably not the place to make the observation, but the symptoms certainly show up on a regular basis, with questions being posed that clearly presume the answer the questioner wants to hear, with predictable results if the questioner hears an answer that does not confirm his romantic self-interests and an almost embarassing adulation if he does.
And it's not that much better on the professional side. Historians with little economics background trying to make sense of an economic history; Economists with little understanding of the historically peculiar nature of the rail industry; Business writers with little historical or economic training attempting to manufacture a rational explanation for what they see.
D&RG is symptomatic. People want to anthropomorphize circumstance. It's a "plucky" little railroad, isn't it? "Persistant"! Well no, circumstances pretty much defined everything that happened. Alfred Perlman has been identified in some publications as the man that "brought the D&RG" out of bankruptcy, as though that were a yeoman's task vindicating assessments of his brilliance. Actually, every single railroad that entered bankruptcy in the period 1935-1937 -- and there was a bunch -- also came out of bankruptcy 1945-1947. Perlman was Chief Engineer until 1947 and had little to do with any "turnaround" since he was general manager for the period after the railroad left bankruptcy. Too, the "turnaround" had little to do with anything that was not directly tied to WWII and post-War prosperity. But, one explanation fits the "narrative" and the other is pretty mundane.
While it is possible from time to time to identify an original builder as giving life to a genuine dream, even that often falls victim in the hands of railfans and historians alike to some innate desire to tell a good story, rather than the truth. Most likely because while one is easier to tell, the other requires some hard work.
Railway Man wrote: In simplest terms, Amtrak M&E was an initiative in which Amtrak would market intermodal services in direct competition with Class I intermodal services, and achieve pricing power by continuing to use Amtrak's passenger train slots which by law are costed to Amtrak at a tiny fraction of their true value. Amtrak M&E even proposed to expand Amtrak service to a large swath of new lanes, service which consisted of an intermodal train with a token Amtrak rider coach on the rear, anticipating that it could purchase these slots again at a fraction of true market value because in its eyes it was creating a new public good.The reaction from the Class Is to this initiative varied from "You've got to be kidding" to "OK, I see now that you're serious but preternaturally naiive -- and the answer is no."Romantically, it sure looked like a way to revisit the passenger glory days of yore. From a practical viewpoint, it was if a railroad's passenger, mail & express business suddenly seceded from the railroad, set up its own business with its own books, bank accounts, and profit extraction, and was shocked when the freight railroad paid a visit and asked it to start paying rent on its stations, tracks, and shops. RWM
In simplest terms, Amtrak M&E was an initiative in which Amtrak would market intermodal services in direct competition with Class I intermodal services, and achieve pricing power by continuing to use Amtrak's passenger train slots which by law are costed to Amtrak at a tiny fraction of their true value. Amtrak M&E even proposed to expand Amtrak service to a large swath of new lanes, service which consisted of an intermodal train with a token Amtrak rider coach on the rear, anticipating that it could purchase these slots again at a fraction of true market value because in its eyes it was creating a new public good.
The reaction from the Class Is to this initiative varied from "You've got to be kidding" to "OK, I see now that you're serious but preternaturally naiive -- and the answer is no."
Romantically, it sure looked like a way to revisit the passenger glory days of yore. From a practical viewpoint, it was if a railroad's passenger, mail & express business suddenly seceded from the railroad, set up its own business with its own books, bank accounts, and profit extraction, and was shocked when the freight railroad paid a visit and asked it to start paying rent on its stations, tracks, and shops.
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum "We have met the anemone... and he is Russ." Bucky Katt "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics
To briefly correct & supplement my previous post:
Perlman's innovative work in restoring washed-out rail lines was on the CB&Q in the 1930's, not the D&RGW.
Perlman is also - and perhaps better - known for restoring the bankrupt Denver & Rio Grande to profitability, as Executive Vice President under Judge Wilson McCarthy.
He earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering from MIT in 1923, and a Masters in Railway Transportation from Harvard Business School in 1931 - neither one a shabby institution.
- Paul North.
Murphy Siding wrote: One last question, before this thread slips off into oblivion. Alfred E. Perlman played a central role in PennCentral. Most accounts note that he was hired by the NYC based on what he did for the Rio Grande. They never really go into detail what he actually did for DRGW. What was his role, that he received such high marks for?
For a guy who started as a track laborer for the Northern Pacific Railroad, he went a long ways fast. In general, for those who believe the industry is always right, Perlman stands in marked contrast by nearly always proving it wrong. For those who take the trouble to use search engines, there is a great deal of information on line. For those who prefer to let others do their work for them, I am sure someone will oblige.
"Alfred E. Perlman Dies at 80; New York Central President." The New York Times. May 2, 1983.
An interesting appearance in a corporate movie:
http://www.archive.org/details/BigTrain1950
His biggest impact on the industry was perhaps not through his ill-fated role in the Penn Central debacle, and certainly not the D&RGW, but through the impact of his various vice presidents and assistants, generally equipped with the MBA degree he felt most important, spreading out through the industry as they jumped a sinking ship, generically known as "Perlman's Boys", bringing modern financial analytical tools to the industry.
Railway Man wrote: chad thomas wrote:I recall reading where he was responsible for introduceing spectoral analasys of diesel engine oil to determine when major componets were near failure (due to metalic residues in the lube oil).I've read those accounts too, Chad, along with some others. The problem is context. If, for example, we had an article from a respected railway mechanical journal such as Modern Shop entitled "Advances in Diesel-Electric Maintenance through Spectrographic Analysis of Lubricating Oil," and in that article it said something like "The D&RGW, under the leadership of A.E. Perlman, was the first to investigate and employ these methods, which were then emulated by all other railroads," then we'd really be on to something. But instead, the source is a history of the D&RGW, a history whose preparation was financed by the D&RGW, and with a thesis statement that could be described as "This is the greatest railway EVER. Trust me." The source and the context is not sufficient for a reader to judge if the fact has meaning. I will applaud and honor the person who shoulders the herculean task of plowing through all the railway professional journals published during Perlman's era at the D&RGW and reports back whether he caught the attention of his peers, or made a difference at the D&RGW that proved his mettle, or did things that advanced the industry. And I'll be thrilled, because I'd like to know the answer, too. I have been through every issue of Railway Age from 1890-1970, page-by-page, item-by-item, and I did read everything I could find on D&RGW, but that's just one journal, and one because of its breadth of scope is unlikely to be definitive on mechanical engineering or track and structures engineering. I don't recall anything about Perlman that was astonishing but I wasn't looking for it either. Someday when I retire from the railroad job I will repeat my steps and look. I do recall that the D&RGW got more press than it would if on a per-capita revenue or mileage basis, which is in itself a good sign that maybe its management was indeed better than your average bear. Or, perhaps the editors of Railway Age just liked the scenery!RWM
chad thomas wrote:I recall reading where he was responsible for introduceing spectoral analasys of diesel engine oil to determine when major componets were near failure (due to metalic residues in the lube oil).
I will applaud and honor the person who shoulders the herculean task of plowing through all the railway professional journals published during Perlman's era at the D&RGW and reports back whether he caught the attention of his peers, or made a difference at the D&RGW that proved his mettle, or did things that advanced the industry. And I'll be thrilled, because I'd like to know the answer, too. I have been through every issue of Railway Age from 1890-1970, page-by-page, item-by-item, and I did read everything I could find on D&RGW, but that's just one journal, and one because of its breadth of scope is unlikely to be definitive on mechanical engineering or track and structures engineering. I don't recall anything about Perlman that was astonishing but I wasn't looking for it either. Someday when I retire from the railroad job I will repeat my steps and look. I do recall that the D&RGW got more press than it would if on a per-capita revenue or mileage basis, which is in itself a good sign that maybe its management was indeed better than your average bear. Or, perhaps the editors of Railway Age just liked the scenery!
RWM, Thanks for your input. Thinking about it I got that from a WP / Al Perlman article by Rush Loveing Jr. a while back in Trains mag. I figured it was credible and took it on face value.
I believe that while Perlman was in a high-up Engineering or Operating Dept. position with the D&RGW, he pioneered - or at least provided a great case study in - the use of off-track construction equipment. That would include such types as bulldozers, dump trucks, and the like, instead of work-train steam shovels, cranes with clamshell buckets, and gondolas or dump cars, etc. My recollection is this occurred in restoring a key line back to service in an incredibly short time after a flood (or similar event) - far quicker and with less work-train disruption to resuming operations than would otherwise have been expected.
There have been at least 1 - and maybe 2 - articles on Perlman in Trains since about 1970 - 1 of them within the last 5 years or so, that would confirm my recollection. I'll try to provide a citation in the next day or two.
snagletooth wrote: While this is mostly a post to get this in "My Forums" (this is a REALLY great read!), I thought I'd add an uneducated theory on Gould. Being thrust into the man of the Family bread and butter, the Mopac, maybe(?!) Gould's idea was protection of himself and MP. Many rail owners had been in the game a long time and (in his mind, and probably in reality) had forgotten more tricks to ruin the competition than he knew. By expanding his reach, he would guarantee his home road friendly connections to the east and west, albeit somewhat out and around. It would also make him a little to large for someone to get an easy run on him, or his railroad, in the stock market. Any competitor would hard struck to cut off connections for the MP. Perhaps it wasn't an attempt at large scale provado that drove him, but a childlike sense of fear of failure of losing the family bread and butter? I don't think he had any thoughts of creating a transcontinental railroad, or even trying create a bull-run on the stock market, just a cub's strange attempt at trying to protect the MP from the big bears of the industry.Just a thought... Edit: ooh, ooh, ooh, just had an after-thought (always after the the original post, isn't it? And it keeps this on-topic). Gould obviously wanting and needing a guaranteed friendly western connection, probably couldn't afford ATSF, and Harriman's roads were clearly not an option (Harriman being the biggest threat to Gould and MP in the west), and Hill's lines going way to far north before going west, Rio Grande would have been his only option. Woo-hoo!, but Rio Grande didn't go anywhere near California. Gould, it seems, would have had no choice but to acquire the Rio Grande and build the WP. Any thoughts on Hill having maybe quietly pushing the young Gould to take such a chance to annoy Harriman, and give his own system a California connection in the process (further irritating Harriman, I'm sure!). All with Gould's money, not his own. All the reward, and none of the risk, and all he had to do was convince a young, inexperienced Gould that Harriman was a real threat thim him he HAD to build to California to protect himself and his Mopac. Then build a few short miles to connect to it. I'm sure Hill was salivating at the thought of Gould (not just the Rio Grande) going bankrupt building the WP and upgrading the RG, then step in and buy up the RG/WP quick to put him into Northern California via the Q at Denver and the NP at Berber, Ca. Even if he had nothing to do with, he had to salivating at the thought. I would have been... hehehe! A win-win situation. If Gould succeeds, he has a friendly connection to N. Cal. for two of his roads (which, he did). If he fails, Hill steps in and buys it all up and finishes it himself. I'm probably going off the far end, but rivalries (in any major industry of the time) in those days seem to me to have been as much personal as they were business. I guess basically what I'm asking what about the possiblity that a young and inexperinced Gould may not have been a man of great, yet misunderstood, forsight, but boy played by the type of people he was hoping to ward of, hoping for his quick demise.
While this is mostly a post to get this in "My Forums" (this is a REALLY great read!), I thought I'd add an uneducated theory on Gould. Being thrust into the man of the Family bread and butter, the Mopac, maybe(?!) Gould's idea was protection of himself and MP. Many rail owners had been in the game a long time and (in his mind, and probably in reality) had forgotten more tricks to ruin the competition than he knew. By expanding his reach, he would guarantee his home road friendly connections to the east and west, albeit somewhat out and around. It would also make him a little to large for someone to get an easy run on him, or his railroad, in the stock market. Any competitor would hard struck to cut off connections for the MP.
Perhaps it wasn't an attempt at large scale provado that drove him, but a childlike sense of fear of failure of losing the family bread and butter? I don't think he had any thoughts of creating a transcontinental railroad, or even trying create a bull-run on the stock market, just a cub's strange attempt at trying to protect the MP from the big bears of the industry.
Just a thought...
Edit: ooh, ooh, ooh, just had an after-thought (always after the the original post, isn't it? And it keeps this on-topic). Gould obviously wanting and needing a guaranteed friendly western connection, probably couldn't afford ATSF, and Harriman's roads were clearly not an option (Harriman being the biggest threat to Gould and MP in the west), and Hill's lines going way to far north before going west, Rio Grande would have been his only option. Woo-hoo!, but Rio Grande didn't go anywhere near California. Gould, it seems, would have had no choice but to acquire the Rio Grande and build the WP. Any thoughts on Hill having maybe quietly pushing the young Gould to take such a chance to annoy Harriman, and give his own system a California connection in the process (further irritating Harriman, I'm sure!). All with Gould's money, not his own. All the reward, and none of the risk, and all he had to do was convince a young, inexperienced Gould that Harriman was a real threat thim him he HAD to build to California to protect himself and his Mopac. Then build a few short miles to connect to it. I'm sure Hill was salivating at the thought of Gould (not just the Rio Grande) going bankrupt building the WP and upgrading the RG, then step in and buy up the RG/WP quick to put him into Northern California via the Q at Denver and the NP at Berber, Ca. Even if he had nothing to do with, he had to salivating at the thought. I would have been... hehehe!
A win-win situation. If Gould succeeds, he has a friendly connection to N. Cal. for two of his roads (which, he did). If he fails, Hill steps in and buys it all up and finishes it himself.
I'm probably going off the far end, but rivalries (in any major industry of the time) in those days seem to me to have been as much personal as they were business.
I guess basically what I'm asking what about the possiblity that a young and inexperinced Gould may not have been a man of great, yet misunderstood, forsight, but boy played by the type of people he was hoping to ward of, hoping for his quick demise.
You bring up concepts that are true but are case specific. In the case of the D&RGW, they don't apply. Here's why.
In the era of George Gould, the vast preponderance of traffic was local -- a term of art that means "originates and terminates on the same railroad," as opposed to interchange. Thus for the MoPac, a big, sprawling system, so long as it had a substantial presence in its own territory, the threat of an end-run by another system was not crucial. Where railroads competed sharply in that era was for traffic between small towns and large cities where the move was local to two or more railroads, e.g., wheat moving from Fort Scott, Kansas, to Kansas City. It could move on either Santa Fe or MoPac as a local move, and the rate and service competition pitted the Santa Fe-served elevator in Fort Scott vs. the MoPac-served elevator in Fort Scott. Both would access the same or equivalent terminal elevator in Kansas City.
Only when railroads wanted to support a line with thin local support whose purpose was to bring traffic to and from a point of articulation would transcon-level traffic competition apply. The example in the MoPac's case would the same line that passed through Fort Scott, which encountered increasingly desolate territory beyond Lindsborg, Kansas -- about the western limit of European style spring-planting, rain-supported agriculture -- until for practical purposes it was in a desert, before reaching the articulation point of Pueblo. To make that line pay, the MoPac needed interchange traffic with the D&RGW. The D&RGW was a traffic-originator. Its traffic base was coal, metals, livestock, and some products of farms that it either delivered to the cities at its endpoints, or to connections. The D&RGW as originator of the traffic had some choice of where it went. To the east, it could hand off to the C&S or Santa Fe at Trinidad for points southeast, at Pueblo to MoPac or the Santa Fe at Pueblo for points east, or haul north to Colorado Springs to the Rock Island for points east, or to the UP or CB&Q at Denver for points east (or the Rock Island, too). As Pueblo was the first point of articulation reached east of the Rocky Mountains, the principal choice for traffic flowing out of the mountains was the Santa Fe or MoPac. For practical reasons the D&RGW preferred the MoPac as it had no parallel routes where it competed with the MoPac whereas it was paralleled from Denver to Trinidad by the Santa Fe, and as far west as Canon City, too. The MoPac (Gould) controlled the D&RGW at an early date to protect this profitable business.
Now we come to the Western Pacific. The point often overlooked is that the D&RGW was not viable as a transcontinental railroad until about 1928-29. It was simply too slow, too expensive to operate, and too fragile to be a competitor on anything other than paper. Thus in 1902 or so, when Gould conceived of building the WP, there could have been no intent of protecting an existing transcontinental traffic flow to the MP via the D&RGW, because there was virtually none.
If Gould's plan was to build a transcontinental railroad -- and there's little evidence but hearsay to support that conclusion -- then building the WP was only half the problem solved. He still had a gap between Salt Lake City and Pueblo that was filled only by a transcon-in-being; it was not practical for use. From an engineering and operating perspective, what the D&RGW had was a right-of-way already acquired, and a track just good enough to run construction trains to build a new railroad more-or-less in the same right-of-way. Nor did Gould have the assets to mortgage or cash in the bank to pay for rebuilding the D&RGW. Perhaps Gould anticipated that general economic growth would create so much traffic that he could bootstrap the reconstruction of the D&RGW. If he thought that, then he was not too astute about geography, mining, agriculture, or manufacturing, as there was little prospect of that growth occurring due to the lack of water in the West. E.H. Harriman and J.J. Hill were that astute, and refrained from building useless extensions into deserts or from parallelling already-built railroads that had taken up the best location. Where they clashed they soon cooperated.
It's hard for us to day, with coal moving from Wyoming to Georgia, containers from Los Angeles to Newark, and lumber from British Columbia to Florida, to contemplate the world as it was in 1900, when the average haul for lumber and coal was perhaps one hundred miles. Transcon strategy then was to seize the productive local territory first, attract the shippers to trackside and encourage them to invest in trackside structures and facilities for handling the business, and build up the local business carefully and prudently. At points of articulation, the idea was that it mattered not who or how many was the connections, only that if the preponderance of the traffic originated or had to terminate only on your railroad, then you controlled the connection. The UP was the classic example at Council Bluffs of this strategy.
Found a better Standard gauge vs Narrow gauge photo, this one is of D&RGW passenger car's, those NG coaches arnt that small. The NG coach on the left is 319 with the closed vestibules from when it was modernized for the "San Juan" trains
http://photoswest.org/cgi-bin/imager?00401110+RR-1110
Also here is one showing SG vs NG Cabeese and duel gauge track in Alamosa
http://www.drgw.org/features/hall/ala08.htm
CSSHEGEWISCH wrote: selector wrote: Yes, and the trucks, themselves, would be lighter (probably...if they accommodate smaller axles) which means less unsprung weight, and that would probably be easier on the rails? Erik?Less unsprung weight would be easier on the rail structure, but remember that the whole rail structure is also lighter to begin with. Cape gauge (3'6") carries some heavy tonnages in South Africa and Queensland, but the engineering is also much more robust than what most of us picture for narrow gauge.
selector wrote: Yes, and the trucks, themselves, would be lighter (probably...if they accommodate smaller axles) which means less unsprung weight, and that would probably be easier on the rails? Erik?
Yes, and the trucks, themselves, would be lighter (probably...if they accommodate smaller axles) which means less unsprung weight, and that would probably be easier on the rails?
Erik?
Less unsprung weight would be easier on the rail structure, but remember that the whole rail structure is also lighter to begin with. Cape gauge (3'6") carries some heavy tonnages in South Africa and Queensland, but the engineering is also much more robust than what most of us picture for narrow gauge.
Indeed! Spoornet is quite a rail system. It and the Western Australia iron-ore haulers show what can be done with a single-purpose line versus the compromises inherent in a network such as North America. North America is fortunate that its early builders were so cash poor as it forced them away from emulating British practice with its emphasis on grade and curve minima, thus little investment was made in a fixed plant conceived for a small loading gauge.
I've never heard specifics. It's an interesting question and I would like to know the answer, too.
P.S. -- as long as you keep asking questions, you'll keep this thread alive.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Thanks, Paul.
Mr_Ash wrote: had to search a bit to find a pictureIDK to me 36" narrow gauge feels more human size... standard gauge is just fricken huge and I'm 6'3!
had to search a bit to find a picture
IDK to me 36" narrow gauge feels more human size... standard gauge is just fricken huge and I'm 6'3!
Looks like a "N"-scale car next to a "HO"-scale car.
mudchicken wrote:Professor George W. Hilton has gotten into this subject in detail for those who cannot seem to grasp what RWM is talking about. Best description and analysis would be in "American Narrow Gauge Railroads" Stanford University Press 1994.
Professor George W. Hilton has gotten into this subject in detail for those who cannot seem to grasp what RWM is talking about. Best description and analysis would be in "American Narrow Gauge Railroads" Stanford University Press 1994.
A very fine book indeed. The format of the book is similar to his 1964 book on electric interurbans, though production values had improved in the intervening 30 years. I was impressed by how the book was laid out, done by someone with very good taste (might have something to do with D.E. Knuth being a Stanford prof).The book is filled with all sorts of interesting details about the history and technology of the narrow gauge lines.
Hilton also touches upon the subject of wide gauge RR's to complete the coverage as to why standard gauge is standard in this country. One common problem to both narrow and wide gauge lines was the lack of the network effect - i.e. a standard gauge car could go to hundreds of different RR's all over North America, where narrow or wide gauge cars could at best be intechanged with a couple of lines over a limited geographical area.
Makes me wonder what the US would have been like if we went for the Erie's 6 foot gauge...
Which reminds me - one advantage of narrow gauge (and a disadvantage for wide gauge) is that the axles end up being shorter, lighter and stiffer for the same diameter.
mudchicken wrote: Professor George W. Hilton has gotten into this subject in detail for those who cannot seem to grasp what RWM is talking about. Best description and analysis would be in "American Narrow Gauge Railroads" Stanford University Press 1994.
arbfbe wrote:The narrow gauge vs the standard gauge argument went on in the railroad trade press in the 1850s through about 1900 in a form which would do this forum proud. Proponents on both sides were set in their arguments and carried on editorial and personal battles right to then end of major railroad construction. Niether side was willing to give an inch. Economically the standard gauge side won the war but I am sure there would be individuals who would argue that the biggest mistake the UP and CP made was building their transcontinental railroad to standard gauge instead of 3' standards. The flip side is from the minority who believed in 5' and 6' gauge standards, if standard gauge was good, wide gauge would be better. If people had the forsight to look into what railroads would become by 2008 they could have noted the standard gaugers were too narrow minded to build for the future and not the present.
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