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> BART uses 5'6" rail gauge. Standard US rail gauge is 4'8.5". Interesting. When I saw this, I wondered if it was to match another standard gauge that was judg
by privong 10y ago
> BART uses 5'6" rail gauge. Standard US rail gauge is 4'8.5".
Interesting. When I saw this, I wondered if it was to match another standard gauge that was judged to be superior. But, looking at the list of rail gauges on wikipedia[0], 5'6" is the gauge for railways in India ("Indian broad gauge" to be specific). The initial BART rolling stock seems to have been build by Rohr, Inc.[1], which is based in California. So it seems unlikely that they were benefiting from any economies of scale from Indian rail construction. Rohr also seems to have built rolling stock for the Washington, D.C. metro, which uses a near-standard 4'8.25" gauge[2].
Perplexing.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohr,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohr,_Inc. (you'll need manually add the period to the end of the URL, because of how HN converts this into a link)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Metro#System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Metro#System
- mtkd 10y agoif, 150+ years ago, when we were building all the rail infrastructure in India, someone said - that there would be no fast line from Delhi to London in 100 years - people would think you were nuts - right now it's tricky to get from London to Berlin, India is near impossible
- ingsoc79 10y agoIt most likely would have happened, if the airplane hadn't been invented. Now you can fly from Delhi to London in 8-9 hours.
- CalChris 10y agoThere is the theory that Rohr was an aerospace company and didn't know about standards; I find this hard to believe. Some say there was a study about car dynamics. But the article I read said that no one actually remembers. The design docs are in a transportation library in Monterey and they apparently don't say. Here's a collection of theories, all plausible with no confirming evidence: http://myprogressiverailroading.com/rail_forum/maintenance_of_way_mow/f/3295/t/21974 http://myprogressiverailroading.com/rail_forum/maintenance_o... BTW, Pittsburg uses 5'6" as well. DC Metro is even more ridiculous. It's only 1/4" different from standard gauge.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- desdiv 10y ago>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohr,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohr,_Inc. (you'll need manually add the period to the end of the URL, because of how HN converts this into a link) FYI, the URL encoding for "." is "%2E", so replacing period with %2E works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohr,_Inc%2E https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohr,_Inc%2E