If the gauge were 4'1½"

[RLBH]

14 hours ago, rodent279 said:

Presumably you'd need to increase the axle diameter to maintain stiffness, which would make wheelsets very heavy, increasing the unsprung weight. To compensate, you'd need thicker, heavier rails, to avoid rail breakages.

I have some diagrams of proposed rolling stock for the Breitspurbahn - the enormous track and loading gauge permits proportionately enormous stock. Which is of course enormously heavy, so that even with a 35-tonne axle load almost everything would be running on 8-wheel bogies. The 200-tonne capacity bottom-unloading coal hoppers actually had an underframe longer than the body to have enough space for the wheels.

 

Saner engineers feld that a four-track standard-gauge railway made more sense, but designing a gigantic railway to satisfy the Fuhrer's whims was probably preferable to serving as a rifleman on the Eastern Front.

[Wickham Green]

Just spotted there's an advert hereabouts "Adjustable rails keep you in the race" .................. do they know something we don't ??!?

[DavidB-AU]

On 25/02/2020 at 20:40, RLBH said:

I have some diagrams of proposed rolling stock for the Breitspurbahn - the enormous track and loading gauge permits proportionately enormous stock. Which is of course enormously heavy, so that even with a 35-tonne axle load almost everything would be running on 8-wheel bogies. The 200-tonne capacity bottom-unloading coal hoppers actually had an underframe longer than the body to have enough space for the wheels.

 

Saner engineers feld that a four-track standard-gauge railway made more sense, but designing a gigantic railway to satisfy the Fuhrer's whims was probably preferable to serving as a rifleman on the Eastern Front.

 

They were envisaged to be the equivalent of ocean liners for a land-based empire. Here's one of the designs for a behemoth of a locomotive.

 

 

 

 

[RLBH]

9 hours ago, DavidB-AU said:

They were envisaged to be the equivalent of ocean liners for a land-based empire.

When you look at what they were actually expected to achieve - standard gauge railways have done as much or more. Goods trains were to reach maxima of 16,000 to 18,000 tonnes (1,200 metres long) at 100 kph - the locomotive you've shown would handle such trains on non-electrified sections. That's the kind of performance now being achieved on standard gauge railways in North America.

 

Shorter-distance passenger trains (i.e. German domestic services) were to use multiple units with 1,000 to 1,600 passengers, capable of 250 kph. That's achieved or exceeded on many national high-speed rail systems today. The long-distance passenger trains aren't directly matched, but that's partly because the demand for them isn't there - almost anyone wanting to travel that kind of distance flies instead. Something approximating them in terms of accomodation standards could be done with double-deck standard gauge stock, though you'd need to run multiple trains to handle the same number of passengers.

 

The whole thing is utterly barking, with huge amounts of excess weight (load being 75% of gross weight on the goods wagons, for example), but fascinating for it.

Edited February 27, 2020 by RLBH

[PatB]

Quite a lot of the Third Reich's engineering projects seem to have been utterly barking. Probably no bad thing as, if they hadn't wasted so much time and skilled manpower on dangerous rubbish, they'd have probably been noticeably harder to beat. 

[ejstubbs]

3 hours ago, PatB said:

Quite a lot of the Third Reich's engineering projects seem to have been utterly barking.

 

Such as this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_VIII_Maus - all 188 tonnes of it, maximum speed 12mph   Although Krups had proposed this 1,000 tonne, 25mph beast earlier which Hitler apparently liked but Speer put the kybosh on.

 

The nearest the Allies got to such impractical "magnificence" during the war were the American T28 (87 tonnes and a rather pedestrian 8mph) and the British Tortoise (79 tonnes and 12 mph).  These would have been roughly equivalent to the slightly more sane German Löwe tank - which was actually dropped in favour of the Maus!

 

The wasted effort, money and expertise of the German super heavy tank projects is fairly widely acknowledged.

Edited February 27, 2020 by ejstubbs

[newbryford]

On 24/02/2020 at 11:54, Allegheny1600 said:

 

I don't think we need worry about having to increase the track gauge for at least another century or so.

 

 

 

 

To mis-quote a line from a well known film.

"Where we're going, we don't need rails......."

[TheSignalEngineer]

The Peak Forest Tramway which ran from Bugsworth Basin near Whaley Bridge to roughly the location of the present yard at Peak Forest was laid to a gauge of 4' 2 1/2". 

Incidentally it had the distinction of running in three centuries, being built between 1795 and 1799, passing from the ownership of the Canal company which was bought by the MS&L through to the LNER before closure in 1925. The last stone was thought to have been carried in 1924, still using horses and gravity to move the wagons.

[sir douglas]

Middleton railway in Leeds was originally 4'1"

 

some or many (dont know exactly how many) early scottish railways were 4'6" which was known as "Scotch gauge"

[pH]

9 hours ago, sir douglas said:

some or many (dont know exactly how many) early scottish railways were 4'6" which was known as "Scotch gauge"

 

List here (not guaranteed complete):

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_ft_6_in_gauge_railway

[Siberian Snooper]

9 hours ago, pH said:

 

List here (not guaranteed complete):

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_ft_6_in_gauge_railway

 

Down here, also known as Dartmoor gauge, the Plymouth and Dartmoor,  Lee Moor and the Redlake tramways  were 4ft 6ins . I can't remember if the Rattlebrook tramway was 4ft 6ins or not and I may have missed one or two.

 

 

Edited March 10, 2020 by Siberian Snooper

[Andy Reichert]

 

We use Corvettes on fast trains over here in the US too.

 

Andy