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On the other hand.... "Unification to standard gauge on May 31 – June 1, 1886 [United States] In 1886, the southern railroads agreed to coordinate changing ga
by sbuttgereit 1y ago
On the other hand....
"Unification to standard gauge on May 31 – June 1, 1886 [United States]
In 1886, the southern railroads agreed to coordinate changing gauge on all their tracks. After considerable debate and planning, most of the southern rail network was converted from 5 ft (1,524 mm) gauge to 4 ft 9 in (1,448 mm) gauge, then the standard of the Pennsylvania Railroad, over two days beginning on Monday, May 31, 1886. Over a period of 36 hours, tens of thousands of workers pulled the spikes from the west rail of all the broad gauge lines in the South, moved them 3 in (76 mm) east and spiked them back in place.[6] The new gauge was close enough that standard gauge equipment could run on it without problem. By June 1886, all major railroads in North America, an estimated 11,500 miles (18,500 km), were using approximately the same gauge. To facilitate the change, the inside spikes had been hammered into place at the new gauge in advance of the change. Rolling stock was altered to fit the new gauge at shops and rendezvous points throughout the South. The final conversion to true standard gauge took place gradually as part of routine track maintenance.[6] Now, the only broad-gauge rail tracks in the United States are on some city transit systems."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge_in_the_United_States#Unification_to_standard_gauge_on_May_31_%E2%80%93_June_1,_1886 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge_in_the_United_Stat...
- Gravityloss 1y agoAmazing. I wonder if one can do anything like this with the current concrete sleepers and thermite welded tracks.
- IAmBroom 1y agoThe welds could be cut and rewelded, obviously. The sleepers are molded with preset widths, however, and would need replacement.
- close04 1y agoProbably the biggest challenge is that there is way more rail traffic today and it's more tightly coupled in logistics chains and people's day to day lives. Disruptions are more expensive and harder to tolerate. And that's on top of the technical challenges, tolerances leave less room for error today.
- shaftoe 1y ago(US centric assumption) It might be easier to change today than it was in 1886. Back then, trains were really the only means of travel between cities. Today, there are less passenger trains than back then, though more freight (even with trucks and planes). But freight diversions/delays could be scheduled well in advance and have alternative means. Not to mention, since then we've developed variable gauge train tech. A subset of trains could run during the cutover. It's likely more costly today, but less disruptive.
- MyPasswordSucks 1y agoPassenger travel is easy mode. The economic consequences of disrupted freight dwarf anything you could imagine from disrupted passenger travel of equal duration. That's why the US has always strived to do a really, really good job with their freight rail system, and US freight is still to this day generally considered the best freight rail system in the world, even as passenger rail lags well behind. Remember that freight is more than just moving pallets of finished goods to Amazon warehouses. It doesn't matter if you've given the cows a month's advance notice, if they don't have feed they're still going to starve; and no matter how many KPIs you dangle at the silos, they're only going to hold x amount of reserve grain.
- AlotOfReading 1y agoAny competent shipper facing a train issue will just put the load on semis instead for 3-10x the price. Freight rail mainly exists as an low cost bulk carrier of convenience these days. Ships outcompete rail for bulk goods along inland waterways, and semis outcompete rail for network volume, ease of delivery, and adaptability to constraints.
- franktankbank 1y agoI see several trains go by per day on my pretty sleepy tracks. You have no clue the amount of semis that would need to be built to accommodate your proposal, they just do not wait in the wings. Do you think all the bulk shipments are being done for fun and someone isn't waiting for 5000 gallons of HCL and 2000 tons of coal?
- Gravityloss 1y agoSince it's only 90 mm, I wonder if one could add some sort of a 45 mm lateral adapter between the rails and the ties on both sides. At least for low speed track parts...
- phkahler 1y agoImagine one short "train" whose tail is able to pull up one rail of the track behind it. Then another train whose front is an automated thingamajig to take the loose rail and nail it down a specific distance from the fixed rail. How much play there is in the loose rail depends on how far apart these two train are. Notice that the nailer runs on the narrow rails while the nail-puller runs on the wide ones.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoProbably not, but laying track or replacing sleepers is a very satisfying to look at, fully automated process.
- gosub100 1y agoEven the wooden sleepers would have to be weakened by moving the spikes over. Unless the old holes were patched.
- PaulRobinson 1y agoAn impressive feat, that is unlikely unachievable on a modern train network. The tolerances are just a bit tighter, the risks and liabilities are higher, and the workforce just isn't "there" - this is from a time when rail was a huge money earner and could afford to employ a huge number of people. Today? Not so much, pretty much anywhere in the World.
- hedora 1y agoIn the US, rail tolerances seem to be getting looser over time, and derailments are still uncommon. I’d guess that overseas modern non-high speed trains could deal with it. The passengers might not put up with it though.
- fuddy 1y agoA country that would put up with US rail is a big ask.
- panick21_ 1y agoDerailments are incredibly common in the US.
- sehansen 1y agoThere have been around 3 derailments per day in the US in the past few years: https://www.nlc.org/resource/interactive-rail-safety-map-see-derailments-in-communities-across-the-u-s/ https://www.nlc.org/resource/interactive-rail-safety-map-see...
- Suppafly 1y ago>The tolerances are just a bit tighter, the risks and liabilities are higher, and the workforce just isn't "there" Sure, but they do it with big machines that ride down the rails now instead of lining up thousands of men with sledge hammers.
- crote 1y agoThere are no ready-made gauge changing machines, though. Not exactly a big market for those.
- DocTomoe 1y ago[flagged]
- lazide 1y ago'86, in the south? Let's not be racist and assume the labor was Chinese - surely it was 95% recently freed black slaves paid almost nothing + 'free' prison labor. (/s, a little).
- firesteelrain 1y agoThis was 20 years after the Civil War. It consisted mostly of skilled and semi-skilled workers laborers that were White, African American and other immigrant labor. Chinese laborers were mostly concentrated in the West not the South. The reconstruction of the southern rail network involved many people who were part of the Southern economy and employment structure at that time
- lazide 1y agoI believe that’s what I said.
- firesteelrain 1y ago"'86, in the south? Let's not be racist and assume the labor was Chinese - surely it was 95% recently freed black slaves paid almost nothing + 'free' prison labor. (/s, a little)." It's not what you said
- lazide 1y agoI’m pretty sure that’s exactly what I said, actually. [https://www.train-museum.org/2019/02/18/black-railroad-jobs/ https://www.train-museum.org/2019/02/18/black-railroad-jobs/] Which part do you think I didn’t?
- 1y ago
- metadat 1y agoCorresponding discussion: The Days They Changed the Gauge (1966) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8371773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8371773 (2014, 15 comments) And a related discussion: Why BART uses a nonstandard broad gauge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32031131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32031131 (2022, 253 comments) The BART discussion was where I first learned about the North American 2-day gauge change. A truly inspiring feat for so many engineers to come together across such a large amount of land area to Make It Happen.
- noelrock 1y agoSo odd - was listening to an account of this in an Audiobook just yesterday - "Why Nothing Works" by Marc Dunkelman. Was essentially making the point that this sort of thing would be several magnitudes of difficulty harder to pull off today, and certainly wouldn't happen within that timeframe.
- nayuki 1y ago> Now, the only broad-gauge rail tracks in the United States are on some city transit systems. One such oddball is the TTC subway/streetcar gauge of 1495 mm in Toronto, Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto-gauge_railways https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto-gauge_railways
- earnestinger 1y agoDoes it imply that, Toronto finally is one of United States cities with broad gauge rail tracks?
- dehrmann 1y agoMakes it even crazier that Bart would choose a non-standard gauge 75 years later. And now they're stuck paying for custom trains with less flexibility and longer lead times.
- wbl 1y agoBART was always going to need custom trains for other reasons beyond track gauge. Electric third rail at those speeds isn't standard. 125kV pantagraph would mean big expensive tunnels and stations due to clearance requirements.
- badc0ffee 1y agoElectric third rail at 130 km/h? The LIRR does it, with standard gauge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island_Rail_Road https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island_Rail_Road I also don't know where you're getting 125kV from. Many trains throughout the world use 25kV, especially high-speed ones (actually high speed, like 200+km/h), but BART uses 1000V, which is closer to a typical subway system.
- fanf2 1y agoThird rail lines south of London often run at 90mph and up to 100mph in places. BART’s top speed is 80mph.
- LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago12.5kV?
- wbl 1y agoThank you!