kenny dorhamWhat is the purpose of this.? If i am reading Wiki correctly, you can only run one train, in one direction, at one time. If that IS correct...........what is the advantage of a Gauntlet Track.? Thank You
One advantage is doing away with switch points to gain access to the gauntlet area of the track - just frogs are needed on simplest of gauntlet situations.
In the case of the B&O's Howard Street tunnel in the passenger AND freight days. The tunnel was double tracked for passenger trains. A gauntlet track was installed down the center of the tunnel for freight trains to take advantage of the height of the arch at the center of the tunnel. Access to the tunnel was controlled by interlockings on either end of the tunnel and switches were involved.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
The railroad wants to double track a line, but there's a single track bridge. While two trains can't occupy the bridge at the same time, a gantlet track allows traffic to move without switches, as Balt says.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
A gauntlet arrangement can greatly reduced the maintenance costs associated with switches, and the delays required to stop and line them if they are hand operated.
Space may be a concern, as in Balt's tunnel example, and other uses have a freight track a bit farther away from station platforms to avoid clearance issues with larger freight cars. The ION light rail line in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario has a station like this, they share track with a CN spur and there was not enough room to build a second track.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/95/Waterloo_ION_gauntlet_track.jpg
Sometimes two systems share space and have no need to connect, so a gauntlet becomes ideal. Edmonton used to have a single lane bridge which was shared by a streetcar line and a freight railway in the manner shown in Larry's picture.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
I've seen gauntlet tracks through stations that have high level platforms. One that immediately comes to mind is New Carrollton, MD on the northeast corridor between DC and Baltimore. The gauntlet provides extra clearance for any freight trains passing through the station.
CW
The Erie had one in Warren, Ohio until, IIRC, the early '60s. (1966)
Erie_Warren_Gauntlet by Edmund, on Flickr
Regards, Ed
tree68 The railroad wants to double track a line, but there's a single track bridge. While two trains can't occupy the bridge at the same time, a gantlet track allows traffic to move without switches, as Balt says.
Tree gets extra credit for calling it correctly, gantlet.
Don't worry, everyone including myself use gauntlet in casual conversation.
Jeff
I've seen and used it spelled both ways. Even the Wikipedia article uses and accepts both.
Maybe this is another British/American spelling difference?
The 'gantlet' and 'loading gage' conventions are from the age of simplified-spelling craze that gave us 'Pittsburg' for a few years in its era.
Note that this is the same spirit that tried to get us to use 'Walschaert' when referring to a certain valve gear... a thing I find as reprehensible as pronouncing Boxpok as if it were a disease.
Two railroads, one bridge... this keeps their lines separated without switching or towers!
Some great replies....they all are actually...and now i know why.! :-)
Thanks Again
Overmod The 'gantlet' and 'loading gage' conventions are from the age of simplified-spelling craze that gave us 'Pittsburg' for a few years in its era. Note that this is the same spirit that tried to get us to use 'Walschaert' when referring to a certain valve gear... a thing I find as reprehensible as pronouncing Boxpok as if it were a disease.
My understanding of this is that a "gauntlet" is the type of glove worn in a suit of armor whereas a "gantlet" is a group of soldiers standing in a line to batter a hapless fellow soldier as a form of punishment for doing something wrong or perhaps as part of a hazing ritual.
"Throw down the gauntlet" means to issue a formal challenge as when a knight would drop an armored glove on the ground to signal another knight to resolve a dispute with a "single combat" between the two knights. Steam locomotive crew members would wear gauntlets, that is, heavy leather gloves as protection against touching a hot pipe or surface in a steam locomotive cab positioned at the boiler backhead.
"Run the gantlet" means to traverse a path presenting serious danger as in the soldier being punished by being required to pass by his fellow soldiers who would strike or batter the poor guy.
I would say that the section of trackwork where a pair of tracks are merged into four rails to pass an area of restricted width clearance is properly a "gantlet." If two trains by accident tried to negotiate that track section at the same time, both of them would be pretty heavily damaged by sideswiping each other.
As to "you say gannt-let, I say gawnt-let, let's call the whole thing off", the two spellings have lapsed into interchangable use to refer to the armored glove and the line of soldiers administering a form of bodily, physical punishment along with things and expressions derived from the same. Gary Larson the cartoonist of "The Far Side" satirized this e0e94fd8430143fb7b88d85aa7d677b4.jpg (1291×1625) (pinimg.com), where a "mountain man" wearing a raccoon-tail hat and deerskin clothing had to cross an "pillow gauntlet" (the way Larson spelled it) to earn the respect of a group of Indians in their supposed traditional attire.
But originally, a gauntlet is something you wear and a gantlet is something you "run" so as to reduce your exposure to being battered, so they are two very different things even though they were originally military terms.
As to subsituting Walschaert for Walschaerts, this source Steam Locomotive Walschaert Valve Gear Animation (trumpetb.net) claims that for legal/historical reasons, Walschaert without the final "s" is the correct name of the valve gear even though Walschaerts with the final "s" and no apostrophe is the name of the Belgian inventor? Who knew? Next thing you know, the correct pronounciation of Mallet will be that of a large-headed hammer? (By the way, I don't know anyone saying the name of the articulated steam locomotive as "mal-AY" -- I say it is "MAL-ee", but maybe I and a bunch of other people are wrong?)
And then there is Watts link ("s" at the end with no apostrophe) Busting the Myth of the Watts Link (maximummotorsports.com), for the approximate straight-line mechanism invented by James Watt for use in steam "beam engines", the Talgo guided-axle mechanism and in high-performance cars. Watts-Watt appears to be the reverse of Walschaert-Walschaerts?
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Overmod The 'gantlet' and 'loading gage' conventions are from the age of simplified-spelling craze that gave us 'Pittsburg' for a few years in its era.
OWTX
Here's one from Roselle Park NJ.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VHb1t9p0d8
Here's some amateur video of it in action with some "truth in advertising" in the title.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EP2jYbxdNo
ORNHOOMy memory may be faulty on this, but I seem to recall seeing a picture in Trains magazine of a bridge (I think on the IAIS) where the double tracks "squeezed" together to three rails, the traffic on both lines "sharing" a common center rail. I wondered at the time why the railroad would build a bridge just wide enough for that arrangement instead of a double track bridge.
My guess is that RR A built the bridge for itself - RR B came along and negotiated a agreement with RR a for B to be able to use the bridge for valuable considerations by using the gauntlet arrangement.
Cars and locomotives got wider, taller and heavier over the years. Maybe that bridge was initially double tracked, but the two tracks were moved inward to get more clearance.
As an example, CP's Connaught Tunnel was originally double track, but was changed to a single track running down the centre of the tunnel in order to accommodate taller cars.
Or perhaps the railroad just cheaped out when they were building the bridge, sometimes it's that simple.
ORNHOOI also wondered if that shared rail in the center would wear down twice as fast and require accelerated replacement.
Paul Milenkovic(By the way, I don't know anyone saying the name of the articulated steam locomotive as "mal-AY" -- I say it is "MAL-ee", but maybe I and a bunch of other people are wrong?)
The etymology of 'gantlet' as a military punishment is from Swedish via the usual translation spelling into English that has ruined so many Gaelic names (gatlope, meaning a running course, to "gantlope") but as so often happens the spelling got conflated with an accepted English word, that being the name for the glove. I don't recall having seen the spelling 'gantlet' used in "running the gauntlet" before you mentioned it -- strange, because I'm a fan of the Far Side in general...
It had never occurred to me that a Watts link derived from that source. It made me think of that old adage from 1066 and All That, "Watts pots don't Boyle".
mudchicken Overmod The 'gantlet' and 'loading gage' conventions are from the age of simplified-spelling craze that gave us 'Pittsburg' for a few years in its era. I take it, you've never been to SE Kansas?
I take it, you've never been to SE Kansas?
I've never heard of the IAIS having anything like that. The RI before it never had anything like that.
The C&NW had a gantlet bridge over the Cedar River that extended underneath the Rock Island at Cedar Rapids. After a derailment on the bridge in the late 1970s they single tracked the bridge and under the RI with controlled power switches at both ends. Eventually, the UP double tracked through there.
The reason for the gantlet was the RI OHB, not the river crossing. That portion of track is not the original CNW main. The main went up into Cedar Rapids. A freight cut-off, once called the Linn County Railway, was built between Otis and Beverly has a single track. The RI track, former BCR&N, was there before the cut-off was built on an embankment. When the CNW went under, they cut through just enough for a single track. Later on, when the CNW double tracked the cut-off, either the RI wouldn't agree to widen the opening or the CNW didn't want to pay for a longer, new bridge.
If memory serves, the old New Haven's bridge over the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie had gantlet tracks.
I found this interesting video from 1991, basically a promo film for converting the bridge into a pedestrian walkway, which was eventually done. The videographer tours the bridge on a railroad handcar, also there's some interesting vintage fim of Poughkeepsie (1920's?) an F-unit powered Amtrak train, and the West Shore Line (now CSX's River Sub) wayyyyyyy down below. Ten minutes long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DprcLfcufT8
Flintlock76If memory serves, the old New Haven's bridge over the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie had gantlet tracks. I found this interesting video from 1991, basically a promo film for converting the bridge into a pedestrian walkway, which was eventually done. The videographer tours the bridge on a railroad handcar, also there's some interesting vintage fim of Poughkeepsie (1920's?) an F-unit powered Amtrak train, and the West Shore Line (now CSX's River Sub) wayyyyyyy down below. Ten minutes long. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DprcLfcufT8
Video didn't show anything that looked like a gauntlet track. What was shown was standard gauge with a pair of inside 'safety' rails. Safety rails are common on bridges as a effort to keep derailed cars upright and inline with the track structure.
BaltACD Safety rails are common on bridges...
Often called "guard rails." Sometimes on a double track bridge, there will only be one, to help keep cars from running into the side of the bridge (or over the edge).
Flintlock is correct. The New Haven's Poughkeepsie bridge did have a gantlet/gauntlet at one time.
One of my New Haven books notes the bridge was originally double track but, as steam locomotives became heavier, the New Haven centered the track and converted it to a gantlet.
I think the New Haven's Maybrook line was single tracked under Penn Central ownership. I'm guessing the gantlet on Poughkeepsie bridge was eliminated at the same time.
I found another video featuring the Poughkeepsie Bridge, it's an Alco-GE post-war promotional film showing the New Haven's route from Maybrook to points east. The bridge shows up at the 8:00 minute mark, the gantlet's mentioned but not shown.
In color and of good quality, the film's a neat time capsule.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO_qDDoa6Cc
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