What if 7ft gauge had become the standard?

[Steamport Southport]

One problem with Broad Gauge is villains couldn't tie damsels in distress to the track unless they were about eight foot tall....

 

 

Easier with smaller gauges.  

 

 

 

 

 

[Titan]

2 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

But the premise could be that the Gauge Commission came down in favour of BG as standard, so only the (significant) mileage of SG built to that date would need widening. The only good thing there is that obtaining the land would be much easier than you are postulating.

 

3 hours ago, Stubby47 said:

 

That's assuming that the rest of the country had already chosen 4 ft 8.5" as the gauge - but what if they had chosen 7ft from the outset ?

 

i was responding to the idea that broad gauge was the standard,  and then made even bigger by expanding sideways to convey containers side by side, beyond the size broad gauge already was as time progressed, not converting 4' 8.5" to broad gauge. 

[Titan]

19 minutes ago, Curlew said:

This table is useful, comparing GWR broad gauge dimensions with other lines https://www.devboats.co.uk/gwdrawings/loadinggauges.php

 

It suggests that the space available between the platform edge and the outside the wheels was about the same as standard gauge - so the same space for outside cyls and valve gear if required.

 

Interesting, so if you wanted a 3 or 4 cylinder simple loco with all the cylinders the same size, they would be just as constrained as standard gauge, except more room for inside valve gear.  Wonder if it would have enabled a four cylinder compound, with the low pressure cylinders in the middle?

[Nearholmer]

4 hours ago, Titan said:

the cost of widening a four or six track main line in London would be astronomical!

But, the GWR main line started as a mere two tracks, likewise the other main lines. In the days when no other transport system could rival the railways, they made enough money to allow great enlargements. Why should these counter-factual fat railways have not done the same? And, maybe with fatter trains, the capacity of each would have been sufficient to obviate the need for some multi-tracking (not all, unless they fitted decent brakes and bogies to goods wagons, though).

 

 

Edited September 7, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Compound2632]

2 hours ago, Titan said:

 

Interesting, so if you wanted a 3 or 4 cylinder simple loco with all the cylinders the same size, they would be just as constrained as standard gauge, except more room for inside valve gear.  Wonder if it would have enabled a four cylinder compound, with the low pressure cylinders in the middle?

 

Grief - if only Webb had known. I already have to sit down in a darkened room after looking at photos like this. The idea of one gravid with twins...

[Pacific231G]

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Commuter trains would get interesting, because the temptation would be to make them short in length, tall, and fat, but that would pose serious problems about boarding and alighting, and station dwell times, which anyone who has used even RER in Paris will know all about. If the trains were double-deckers, the platforms would need to be too.

 

That is more or less what happened in Paris - the short and tall rather than the double deck platforms- Both the l'Ouest and the Est used four wheel double deck coaches for suburban mainly commuter services from the mid nineteenth century until the late 1940s or even early 1950s. On the line to Paris-Bastille they weren't replaced until until a fleet of single deck ex-German bogie coaches were seized after the Second World War.

The earlier "impériales" as they were known were absolute death traps: effectively  a bank of seats for the 3rd class passengers bolted to the lowered roof of a fairly conventional carriage. under a rather flmsy canopy.  Accidents were frequent as passengers scrambled on and off them.  and a passenger standing up on the upper deck would be outside the loading gauge so liable to lose their head! 

Wagon_a_imperiale cc GIRAUD

 

A safer design was developed within  about ten years using iron  solebars with a swan's neck shape at each end to lower the lower deck further. This enabling a cramped upper saloon to fit within even the Ouest's somewhat restricted loading gauge and the last of these were operating on the short steeply graded Enghien-Montmenrency line in the northern suburbs of Paris into the early 1950s. However, some of the open type were still in use into the early 1940s.   

MONTMORENCY_1951 cc Claude Shoshany.

 

Unlike modern doble deckers - including the Duplex TGVs- these were adopted less to get more capacity with short platforms than because the tare weight per seat is less for a double decker so the same locos could haul more passengers. The building cost per seat was also lower.

 

Because they operated in and out of Paris termini to and from which almost all their rush hour passengers were travelling, each of the stations down the line would only be loading or unloading a small proportion of the passengers and, at the Paris  terminus, the turn-round time with steam locos would allow plenty of time for a whole trainload to embark or disembark.   That's obviously more of a problem with a through line like the RERs because passengers will be getting on and off in fairly large numbers at several stations.   

 

 

[Titan]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

But, the GWR main line started as a mere two tracks, likewise the other main lines. In the days when no other transport system could rival the railways, they made enough money to allow great enlargements. Why should these counter-factual fat railways have not done the same? And, maybe with fatter trains, the capacity of each would have been sufficient to obviate the need for some multi-tracking (not all, unless they fitted decent brakes and bogies to goods wagons, though).

 

 

 

The GWR only went from two to four tracks after broad gauge was abolished, arguably the extra width they started with meant that four tracking was much easier for the GWR compared to originally standard gauge railways.  So expanding sideways with extra tracks is not something that happened much with broad gauge.  If it had, they would have had faced bigger land purchase needs than the standard gauge when it happened, which may have constrained them - it is quite possible that only the change to standard gauge made four tracking affordable for the GWR.

[Nearholmer]

Perhaps some combination of open-sided upper decks and fireman’s poles on the platforms might have emerged to allow speedy alighting from trains. Seasoned commuters would carry telescopic siege-ladders to speed-up boarding.

[Compound2632]

14 minutes ago, Titan said:

 

The GWR only went from two to four tracks after broad gauge was abolished, arguably the extra width they started with meant that four tracking was much easier for the GWR compared to originally standard gauge railways.  So expanding sideways with extra tracks is not something that happened much with broad gauge.  If it had, they would have had faced bigger land purchase needs than the standard gauge when it happened, which may have constrained them - it is quite possible that only the change to standard gauge made four tracking affordable for the GWR.

 

The standard gauge relief lines between Paddington and Didcot (or at least some part of them) were built before the abolition of the broad gauge:

 

 

[Nearholmer]

The height of the chimney on that loco when compared to the coaches behind it suggests that they really weren't exploiting the loading gauge to the full. Looks very stable though!

[Steamport Southport]

11 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The height of the chimney on that loco when compared to the coaches behind it suggests that they really weren't exploiting the loading gauge to the full. Looks very stable though!

 

I have a feeling the coaches are convertibles. Made to be easily changed to "narrow" gauge when the BG went.

 

The wide chassis/footboards is the telling aspect.

 

Don't ask me what diagrams though. Pre 1923 GWR isn't really my thing. 

 

 

Jason

[tomparryharry]

14 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

One problem with Broad Gauge is villains couldn't tie damsels in distress to the track unless they were about eight foot tall....

 

 

Easier with smaller gauges.  

 

 

 

 

 

Now, that is a novel way to achieve track circuit bonding!

[tomparryharry]

Just changing gauge is not something to  undertake will-nilly.  Apart from the engineering & logistics, probably the largest hidden part of the operation is finance.  Company assets have a depreciation over time, so there comes a time where the renewals  take place without loss of asset value. 

 

The South Wales main  was probably up for renewal about 1880-ish, and the south west not long afterwards. Little wonder, therefore , that tracks west of Gloucester  had the gauge changed in 1872, whilst the line down to Plymouth remained until 1892. 

 

In certain cases, I'd surmise that there were strict instructions to recover workable assets, if only to offset the expenditure. Although it's not always written down I'd also guess that certain parts of the system were converted well in advance of the conversion.  Places like the Penygraig branch, Aberystwyth-Carmarthen, and Vale of Neath, spring to mind. Redundant asset being recovered to prop up the existing infrastructure. 

 

It was only when the original broad gauge was up for extensive renewal, that the financial officers gave permission for the conversion to go ahead. 

 

Any Company worth its salt will balance the books, regardless of what modellers think.  A classic example is the stationery boiler at Didcot.

[Nearholmer]

The GWR boiled its paperwork? I knew they had some funny habits, but Why did they do that?

[Michael Hodgson]

The main reason for break of gauge at various frontiers was mistrust of the neighbours' invasion plans, whether it was the Russians fearing the Prussians or West Country yokels worrying about the Grockles coming to set up second homes.

[Titan]

14 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

The standard gauge relief lines between Paddington and Didcot (or at least some part of them) were built before the abolition of the broad gauge:

 

 

 

Ok, perhaps I should have said that the relief lines were built to standard gauge, just before broad gauge was abolished...  Nice picture by the way.

[Gareth-Ingram]

A key difference would have been enough space inside models for electric motors and we would never have had the OO modelling scale distortions, perhaps there would have been only HO ?

[009 micro modeller]

Just now, Gareth-Ingram said:

A key difference would have been enough space inside models for electric motors and we would never have had the OO modelling scale distortions, perhaps there would have been only HO ?

 

And would it have still been the same scale (i.e. 3.5mm with most people’s layouts being built to 24.5mm gauge)?

[009 micro modeller]

1 hour ago, Michael Hodgson said:

The main reason for break of gauge at various frontiers was mistrust of the neighbours' invasion plans, whether it was the Russians fearing the Prussians or West Country yokels worrying about the Grockles coming to set up second homes.

 

What was the reason in Australia? Was it just that they all chose their own and didn’t think they’d ever need to be linked?

[tomparryharry]

32 minutes ago, 009 micro modeller said:

 

What was the reason in Australia? Was it just that they all chose their own and didn’t think they’d ever need to be linked?

 

I think that's pretty true. After all, Australia was (is ) vast, so the states were pretty autonomous; just 'get on with it' The concept of joined up thinking is pretty remote, when you've got a population of 6 white people, a million Aborigines, 100,000 camels, and lots of kangaroos.

 

Oh, and Ned Kelly.... 

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, 009 micro modeller said:

And would it have still been the same scale (i.e. 3.5mm with most people’s layouts being built to 24.5mm gauge)?

A rather nice scale emerges if you assume that history still gave rise to German toy trains on 32mm gauge track, which was then halved to 16mm to allow a circuit of track to fit on a dining table.

 

7ft 0.25in = 2140mm

 

2140/16 = 134

 

Which is close enough to a good imperial scale of 1/128, half of S scale.

 

And, people who had room, and wanted greater realism, could have gone for 32mm gauge at 1/64 scale (haven’t a few people actually done this in reality?).

 

Both scales work very nicely from a measurement viewpoint, because thirty seconds of an inch and sixty fourths, were marked on old imperial steel rules. 
 

The scale:gauge ratios aren’t spot-on though, and that’s really good too, because it creates opportunities for pedants to invent very specialised gauges or scales and revel in their separateness from mere r-t-r people.

 

 

Edited September 8, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Gareth-Ingram]

Yup, things would’ve been different. Maybe S scale would now be more popular, instead of O.

Edited September 8, 2021 by Gareth-Ingram

[Stubby47]

Without necessarily ignoring all the interesting off-topic conversations above, what might the real trains have looked like had 7ft been adopted as standard...

 

Suggestions of inside cylinders, wider fire boxes, double stacked coaches are all the sorts of ideas I am after.

 

Disregarding the whys and wherefores of any financial or commercial restrictions, or practicalities due to loading gauges (all of which I am assuming were taken care of in the general development of a 7ft standard system) :  

Would inside cylinders have led to more streamlining ?

Would there have been an increase in container traffic, but short lengths so they fit across the wagons?

Would an electrified 3rd rail have been added in between the running rails instead of outside?

 

[melmerby]

On 07/09/2021 at 11:32, kevinlms said:

 

 

Not quite sure what the alleged advantage is meant to be, because the coaching stock and wagons, weren't really that much wider - certainly not the 2ft 3 1/2in the you might expect.

If you think that an internal width of 10' for a compartment isn't that much wider, I would agree.

The actual max width of the loading gauge was 11' 6" and carriages could be a lot taller at the eaves with 13' ½" at 9' 0" width and the max height in the centre of the gauge of 15'.

 

With a GWR Standard Gauge 9' 3" max width coach, the internal measurement is typically around 8' 6", the bulbous 9' 7" 1930s Cornish Riviera stock gets it up to 9' 1"

Both of these are wider than most mainline stock in the UK

 

[melmerby]

2 hours ago, Titan said:

 

Ok, perhaps I should have said that the relief lines were built to standard gauge, just before broad gauge was abolished...  Nice picture by the way.

By the 1854 the GWR started building standard gauge tracks on former broad only routes, at first by mixed gauge and later, from 1877 extra standard gauge only tracks.

 

To answer an earlier comment some broad gauge only track received normal sleepered track as broad gauge.