Gauges and Wheels Read online

  TRACKING THE GAUGES

  - GAUGING THE TRACKS

  The Story of the World’s Railway Gauges, Yesterday and Today

  By

  Michael Frewston

  Part 1 – Gauges and Wheels

  © Copyright Frewston Books Online 2016

  Contents

  PREFACE

  FOREWORD

  PART 1 – GAUGES AND WHEELS

  GAUGE:

  COMMON GAUGES IN THE WORLD:

  HOW STANDARD GAUGE CAME ABOUT:

  GAUGE WARS:

  GAUGES AND THE WORLD AT WAR:

  GAUGES AND THE RAILWAYS’ QUEST FOR SPEED:

  WHEELS AND RAILS:

  GAUGE CHANGES AND BREAKS OF GAUGE:

  ON TO PART 2…

  PREFACE

  The idea for this book came about when I was touring Australia a few years ago. While many of my journeys within that big and wonderful country were by car and by air, I did travel on a number of trains, both local (in and around Sydney) and long distance (Brisbane to Sydney). During those trips, I couldn’t help but notice the varying gauges I encountered, and how it hampered easy travel between various parts of the country.

  As a (now retired) surveyor, I naturally am constantly measuring things in my mind, sometimes consciously, but as often as not quite subconsciously (and yes, I do have a life!). But as a train enthusiast as well as a surveyor, it was a natural extension of both my railway and my measuring interests to be always looking at the part measurement plays in the process of travelling by train.

  As a final element of that process, my interest in and basic knowledge of engineering gave rise to the intriguing (at least to me!) interface between the wheel and rail, especially in terms of how crucial measurements play their part in ensuring that flanged wheels stay on the track, whether that track be straight, curved or consisting of complex switches and crossings. (I am not an engineer by the way, but I did work closely with engineers for many years, to the point I gained a solid if informal grounding in engineering principles.)

  Only by attention to such details can we ensure that a Eurostar on its way from London to Paris or Brussels can safely share the same rails as the commuter trains running into the Kent countryside (which they did until the dedicated HS1 High Speed Line was built); or that a General Motors diesel locomotive built in London, Ontario, can travel on its own wheels by rail (as these locomotives did until they began to be loaded on to flat cars) to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and then, after its sea journey across the Atlantic, can immediately land on a length of British dockside trackwork, ready to travel virtually anywhere in the UK.

  Thus it is that such a seemingly trivial aspect of railways is in fact fundamental to the success of train journeys throughout the world, just as it has been for over the last 200 years. In wanting to find out more about this subject, I discovered that, while much information can be found in a number of places, there wasn’t a book that easily and concisely encapsulated the whole story in an easily assimilated and readable format.

  Some may find this book a bit ‘nerdy’ or ‘geeky’ in places. If so, I make no apologies! But I do hope that I’ve made it as enjoyable a read as possible, and that it is more than a dreary monologue of facts and figures. If you have any interest in trains, then I think you will find this book of great value.

  Michael Frewston

  FOREWORD

  When we stand on the edge of a railway platform, waiting for our train to arrive, we usually look down at the two steel rails, connected by sleepers, or ties, that provide a support for the rails and keep them the correct distance apart. Perhaps, if we have even the slightest interest in measuring things, we may ponder at the distance between those two steel rails, and wonder why they are spaced apart that exact distance. When we get on the train that eventually arrives, we assume, even without thinking about it, that the train will get us safely to our destination by means of those two steel rails.

  For this to happen of course, those two steel rails must be spaced that exact same distance apart wherever our train travels, from our starting point all the way to our destination. And that distance apart is called the track gauge. In the United Kingdom, and in much of the world, that track gauge is, for the most part, 1435 mm, or as it used to be measured, 4 ft 8.5 in. It is known as Standard gauge.

  But it wasn’t always so, and even today it still isn’t so, in many places in the world and for many reasons. In certain parts of Britain, the traveller will encounter different gauges, while throughout the history of this country’s railways, there were some heroic struggles as different railway builders attempted to prove that their gauge was superior to all the others. Some of these stories will be told later in this book.

  If the intrepid traveller ventures beyond these shores, and either goes by train, or travels by train in another country, he or she will notice that, in the vast majority of countries, the distance between those steel rails looks to be the same as back in Britain. And indeed it usually is – for Standard gauge is in fact standard throughout the world. Whether it’s a Eurostar heading from London to Paris and even beyond; a 2-km long freight train growling its way through the Canadian Rockies, after having travelled from Chicago in the USA; a Shinkansen, or ‘Bullet Train’, speeding through the Tokyo suburbs and on to Osaka; or an underground or subway train whisking passengers under the streets of London or New York: those steel rails will still be 1435 mm apart – Standard gauge.

  But not all the world uses Standard gauge. In fact, there are huge areas where the gauge is anything but Standard. And that is the reason behind this book. For the differences in railway gauges are not only fascinating in their own right, but also often tell of the history involved in building the railways of the world – and even affecting how the world developed. The reasons why different gauges – both wider and narrower than Standard gauge – are to be found in almost all countries of the world are often not technical at all, but can be political, financial, and even personal.

  For example, there were, in many countries, a number of ‘gauge wars’, which often had huge consequences in terms of a country’s development. Some of the railway builders in the past often had very big egos – and were prepared to spend (and lose) vast amounts of money to satisfy those egos, by building their railways to something other than Standard gauge. Those early builders – the pioneers, very often – were anxious, even obsessed, in showing the world that their track gauge was the best, superior to all the others. They were not always right – and even if they were right, in a technical sense, they were rarely right in a commercial sense, as their ultimately bankrupted companies testified.

  If the use of non-Standard gauges was not to satisfy the egos of their builders, then politics was often behind the decisions that were made. Some countries, or even individual areas within a country, simply didn’t want adjacent countries or areas to be able to run their trains over their tracks should they be at war with each other. Or perhaps they wanted to stem unfettered imports brought in on the railways, and so chose a different track gauge to ensure that that could not happen, at least very easily. As will be shown, with the benefit of hindsight of course, some of those decisions were not very smart at the end of the day – yet some of those decisions at the time changed the development of a country and even the course of world history.

  There are also technical reasons as well why non-Standard gauges are, or were, used. Sometimes they are due to the terrain, sometimes due to measurement variances, and even simple accidents of history or expediency. Or perhaps they were due to the quest for improved train performance, such as increased speed, or greater load-carrying capabilities. Whatever the reasons for a railway choosing a non-Standard gauge, the decisions that were made may, or may not,
have been wise ones. This book will, I hope, explore some of those decisions, and why they were made. If nothing else, those decisions often provide significant insights into the mentality of a country, its politics, and its railway builders and pioneers.

  In the 19th century, and to some extent in the early 20th century, the building of railways changed most countries of the world. Whether it was the rapid suburbanisation of London resulting in a dense railway network which permitted people to live well into the countryside, yet commute every day into the big city; the linking of Eastern Canada with the west coast at Vancouver by building a railway through the formidable Kicking Horse Pass in the Canadian Rockies; the Channel Tunnel finally linking Great Britain with the whole of the European continent and beyond; the building of railways high into the Andes that connected previously isolated South American villages and communities; the ability to move vast numbers of people at high speed over long distances that enables Japan to achieve its high living standards; or the means for travellers to see first hand the Australian outback in air-conditioned comfort: whatever the premise for building a railway, that railway will be seen to have been one of the major forces in moulding a country, and in so doing will have changed the country as a result.

  The choice of track gauge – seemingly a minor technical issue, of interest only to ‘geeks’, ‘techies’ or ‘anoraks’ – will instead be seen to have had a major influence on how each country or region of the world has developed. I hope that this book will not be a boring technical treatise on whether the rails you look at every morning on your daily commute happen to be 1435 mm apart or not, but will bring to life how the railways of the world have changed that world – and how the choice of track gauge was as often as not a fundamental part in bringing about those changes.

  Finally, we take a brief look at what the whole railway is about as we know it – a flanged steel wheel running on a steel rail. The measurements and the interface here form the very heart of what makes railways work – some details are more critical than others, but all are important in ensuring that those wheels stay on those rails, whatever distance apart they happen to be.

  Before we look at the whole world of railway track gauges, just some points regarding how this book is written:

  Terminology and spelling will in general follow British practice. There are exceptions – for example, I prefer the North American terms ‘turnout’ or ‘switch’ to describe where a single track diverges into two tracks, rather than the British term ‘points’. But other terms will be British – e.g. I use the term ‘bogie’, rather than the North American ‘truck’, to describe the extra non-driving wheels under a steam locomotive, or the swivelling four- or six-wheel assembly under a diesel or electric locomotive and under long passenger and freight vehicles.

  I have not attempted to cover EVERY single railway and its gauge that ever existed in the world – this book would be five times as long if it did! Consequently, in virtually every country, there will be some aspect of a gauge decision, or a historical aspect or development, that I have skipped over; or some minor railway, even one that might use an odd gauge, that I have ignored. Nonetheless, I hope I have covered everything that is important (as well as a lot of what may be considered of perhaps lesser importance but of significant interest just the same).

  I would love to be able to say that I have personally verified every single piece of information presented in the following chapters. What a dream of a railway odyssey that would be! It would however take some years, a decade even, and an almost unlimited amount of funding, to accomplish. Sadly I am limited in both time and financial resources, and most (but certainly not all) of what follows has been obtained from my own books on trains and railways, my local library, and of course the Internet. Consequently, while I have made every attempt to ensure that as much of the information that follows is accurate (referring to multiple sources as much as possible), I know full well that there will be errors (if for no other reason than that multiple sources often have conflicting information, and I’ve had to decide which source is likely to be correct). If any reader would like to point out any such errors, please email my editor at [email protected]. I will then upload a revised version of this book, and ensure that all who have bought this original version will be contacted by Amazon and offered the revised book at no charge.

  Measurements shown in this book will be, in general (but not exclusively so), metric, as that is the way of almost the entire world in the second decade of the 21st century, as a visit to virtually any railway website on the Internet will verify. Where the choice of track gauge was originally based on imperial units (and most were, including Standard gauge), those units will be shown in the first instances in parentheses, but thereafter generally only metric units will be shown. An exception is made in those parts of the book dealing with the history of gauges, and where the original imperial measurements were an integral part of the decisions made. I know that using primarily metric units may upset a few people (mostly, I’m sure, my more mature readers!), but we do live in an increasingly metric world, so to me using metric units makes sense (and as a surveyor, I have been using solely metric measurements in my work for some decades now, in many countries, and therefore am far more comfortable with them).

  The maps shown at the beginning of each Part show only the main gauges in each country, and default to 1435 mm Standard gauge unless shown otherwise. Where there are two or more main gauges, these will be shown on the maps. But where there are various minor supplementary gauges (such as for small branch lines or private railways), I have described these in the text, but not always shown them on the maps. Also described in the text but generally not shown on the maps are the gauges of the metro and trams systems.

  This book starts out with some explanation of what’s out there in terms of track gauges, together with a little history, followed by some thoughts on the wheel/rail interface, and a number of other aspects of the railway as we know it that might be affected by the choice of gauge. From then on, in Parts 2 to 7, the reader will find that this book is arranged on a country-by-country, or at least a region-by-region, basis, and each Part will include at various times a little additional bit of history into how different gauges came about. That way each country’s or region’s railway system, as far the choice of track gauge has influenced or affected it, can be put into context.

  Parts 2 to 7 start by looking at the cradle of railway development – Great Britain. After moving through both Western and Eastern Europe, our travels will take us to Africa, where much of the continent, in spite of the large distances involved, is still committed to what we call narrow gauge. Then to the Middle East, where strife and conflict have served to inhibit the spread of railways altogether.

  Continuing eastwards, we then travel through Asia, involving the Baltic states, Russia and the CIS, China, India and South East Asia. Australasia then follows – and both the Asian and Australasian continents are where a multiplicity of gauges – Standard, broad and narrow – may be found, often side by side.

  Crossing the Pacific Ocean we will find ourselves in the Americas – North, Central and South, and again a wide variety of gauges, not only on small railways and branch lines, but even for some main lines in difficult terrain.

  In this regard, I have included maps wherever possible. Maps are wonderful things, especially when we are talking about the business of travelling by rail, sometimes over vast distances, as they help us visualise what the railway pioneers were up against, and the conditions, both physical and political, that affected their choice of track gauge.

  So come with me now on our odyssey around the world, as we look at not only the railway tracks on which our trains will roll, but how the gauge of those tracks has shaped those trains we travel on, and even the very world we live in.

  PART 1 – GAUGES AND WHEELS

  GAUGE:

  It seems obvious that a book about gauges should start off by defining what we mean by gauge. While most peopl
e reading this will already know that answer, we should just run through this briefly anyway to be sure, as not everyone may understand the meaning of gauge as we know it today.

  Indeed, even some of the early railway pioneers had different ideas on how to measure the gauge of a railway track. In the past, some railway builders resorted to using the rail-head centreline-to-centreline distance as the gauge (such as the Italians), but for obvious reasons this is too imprecise – that distance will vary as the width of each individual rail varies. Other early railway builders took their cue from road vehicles, which were typically measured from the outermost portions of the wheel rims, and there is some evidence that some railway pioneers measured the gauge of their railways this way as well.

  Similar misconceptions have been found when considering flanged (grooved) tram (streetcar) track. Many pioneers building their street railways in the past actually mistakenly measured the gauge of their tracks as the distance between the inside faces of the flanged faces of the rails – again, that is an erroneous measurement.

  When it was established that for vehicles travelling on rails, it was better to have the wheel flanges located inside the rails, the distance measured between the inside faces of the rail heads was found to be the critical dimension, with the distance between the wheel flanges following on from that, allowing for some lateral play. Today, as has been the case for many years, there is of course never any doubt that the gauge is the distance between the inside faces of the two rails that form a railway track on which a railway vehicle will run.

  The following shows what is meant by track gauge:

  For grooved tram tracks, it is no different: