Why width of railroad

Charles Tisdale tried a different approach. His invention allowed car wheels to slide along a bar so they could be manually widened or narrowed to travel on tracks of various gauges. Though it looked like a good solution, this design, too, was prone to careless handling and wear, and caused many accidents. Another solution was intended to carry narrower gauge cars over broad gauge roads and involved hoisting the narrower gauge cars onto rails placed atop broad gauge trucks.

However, this made the car top-heavy and unstable and it only worked one way; the broader gauge cars could not sit atop trucks on the narrower rails. One remedy for switching gauges was the Ramsey Car Transfer Apparatus. Instead of hoisting the cars off the trucks, the tracks were lowered and trucks with wheels of a different gauge were attached. Some railroads used steam-powered cranes or hoists to lift cars off one set of trucks and onto another. John Imboden patented a steam powered lifter manufactured by the Richmond Car-Lifter Company that raised a car off its current truck then lowered it onto a truck with wheels of the appropriate gauge.

Though such systems could refit eight to ten cars per hour, it was still a rather slow and expensive process. Sometimes the problem was attacked at the track level. Some companies laid a third rail inside or outside existing rails to accommodate trains of two different gauges. As markets widened and railroads began to move products outside local networks, it became evident that the only reasonable solution was to standardize rail gauges.

One by one, railroad companies moved toward the Stephenson, or standard, gauge. Changing the rails was an expensive process, both in actual labor costs, with some companies hiring thousands of workers to change all their rail lines all at once, and in loss of revenue due to railroad down time. But once the decision was made change came quickly. The first step of laying down a railroad track is not very obvious, happening below the surface.

One of the first things crews typically do is grade or install drainage systems in order to prevent the railway from waterlogging. These systems typically utilize pipes, carrier drains, and sometimes attenuation ponds, in order to ensure that proper drainage occurs, and subgrade deterioration and erosion are avoided. The next step of this process involves laying down a layer of material for the rails to sit on in future steps.

The bottom ballast is made up of primarily coarse sand and is spread evenly and level in order to provide a slightly malleable, but firm base for the railway crossties, also called sleepers, and the next layer. Next, the railway sleepers are placed on top ballast, and spaced appropriately. This process can be done manually, or by the use of specialized machines, but in both cases, workers make sure that the central point of the sleepers and the rail track centerline are in alignment.

Once this process is complete, railroad spikes and fasteners, also called chairs, are fixed to the sleepers of wood, or bolted down with a chairbolt. At this point, the rail is ready to be lowered onto the sleepers and fastened to the spikes. While a relatively straightforward process, there are many things engineers and workers have to keep in mind when laying down rails.

One of these factors is the correct use of rail joints when fastening multiple lengths of rail together with a fishplate. Most modern railways utilize continuous welded rail CWR , sometimes known as ribbon railings.

Rails are welded together by using flash butt welding to make a single continuous rail which might be a few kilometers long. As there are just a few joints, this kind, of course, is quite powerful, provides a smooth ride, and requires less maintenance; trains may travel on it at greater rates and with less friction.

In some cases, the cone can last for several weeks. The very first welded trail was used in Germany in And is becoming common on primary lines as in the s. An important factor is a tension in CWR installations. Temperature can have dramatic effects on railroad tracks when the metal in the rail expands or contracts, having the potential to cause the track to buckle or separate.

Because of this, knowing the Rail Neutral Temperature is essential. After the rail has been laid, the top layer of ballast is typically applied. This layer of ballast is made of small, coarse rocks of various shapes and materials. It is important that these rocks be irregularly shaped and not uniform, as they will pile up and hold stronger. This ballast will fill in all the gaps between and underneath the sleepers and rails, providing a strong base for the track as a whole. The Canadian lines converted to it in , and the Southern railroads began a process of conversion that ended with a massive conversion blitz on Memorial Day weekend Oddly, as gauge homogeneity was spreading throughout the continent, there arose a movement for narrow-gauge railroads.

A Scottish engineer, Robert Fairlie, in exposited the idea that great economies in weight could be achieved by use of small equipment such as had become common for private carriers serving mines, timber stands, and factories.

His fallacy was reversing the actual relation mentioned earlier, that area-volume ratios become more favorable as size increases. Remarkably under the circumstances, the narrow-gauge movement had a vogue of 13 years, from to , before it collapsed. Most U. The damage this movement did was much worse elsewhere.

It festooned most of sub-Saharan Africa with a gauge 3 feet, 6 inches poorly suited to the heavy mineral traffic its railways handled, and it beset India, Australia, and Argentina with serious problems of gauge incompatibility. George W. Milwaukee Road passenger trains. Milwaukee Road history. Union Pacific on Cajon Pass in the s. EMD at Don't miss this look at the history of America's most influential builder of locomotives.

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