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Comparison of 4'8 1/2" v 5'3" gauge

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Ken H

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In Great Britian we generally use 'standard gauge - 4' 8 1/2" As does much of Europe and N America
In Ireland, Russia and the Iberian peninsula, and historically in Australia, they use 5'3"

What do people think are the benefits and downsides of the 2 main gauges? Would a general application of 5'3" have allowed faster speeds?

What would have happened if Brunels broad gauge had prevailed in the UK?

And of course we all know standard gauge is set at that because its the distance between the neck and ankles of a damsel in distress :)
 
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swt_passenger

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Speed is not gauge dependent, (ie not directly proportional), this has been asked before, but I’m having difficulty finding the last discussion.
 
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trivran

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AFAIK They don't use 5'3" in Portugal and Spain but they do in Brazil. In Russia the gauge is 1520mm.
 

furnessvale

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Gauge is a compromise. Narrow gauge goes round tighter curves but has a lower ultimate top speed.

Broad gauges can have a higher theoretical top speed and more stability with a wider loading gauge.

Standard gauge is the perfect compromise allowing reasonably tight curves where required, a theoretical top speed where adhesion between steel rail and steel wheel becomes the limiting factor, and allowing a sufficiently large loading gauge as demonstrated by the USA and others.
 

LNW-GW Joint

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Russia (and CIS, Finland and ex-Soviet Baltic states, also some lines extending into Poland/Slovakia) use 5ft gauge (1520mm) not 5ft3 (1600mm).
Spain (Iberian 5ft6/1668mm) is rapidly developing a dual-gauge network with most new high-speed lines being built to standard gauge rather than Iberian gauge.
CAF and Talgo have built global businesses based on variable-gauge rolling stock and the use of in-line gauge-changers.
There's also plenty of mixed-gauge track around, eg in Australia and Spain, as part of the desire to provide through running on standard gauge.
The fastest trains today use standard gauge, so there can't be much of a speed downside.
Some of the longest and heaviest trains run on narrow gauge (eg the 3ft6/1067mm gauge in South Africa).
Gauge is a compromise on performance and construction costs, and Stephenson gauge came out on top.
Reputedly, Russian and Iberian gauges were decided on partly as a means to prevent easy invasion using the railway.
So now those countries' railways are hobbled by outdated 19th century military decisions.
It's a bit like VHS versus Betamax - Betamax was probably the better technology but the rest of the world went VHS because it was the default standard and allowed the best interoperability.
 
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jimm

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In Great Britian we generally use 'standard gauge - 4' 8 1/2" As does much of Europe and N America
In Ireland, Russia and the Iberian peninsula, and historically in Australia, they use 5'3"

What do people think are the benefits and downsides of the 2 main gauges? Would a general application of 5'3" have allowed faster speeds?

What would have happened if Brunels broad gauge had prevailed in the UK?

And of course we all know standard gauge is set at that because its the distance between the neck and ankles of a damsel in distress :)

Russian imperial railways were built to 1524mm gauge, which is 5ft exactly.

Finland (which was part of the Russian Empire until the end of 1917) still uses 1524mm but during the period of the Soviet Union, the railways there were converted from the 1960s onwards to 1520mm, which is now used by the railways of the countries that used to be in the Soviet Union.

Spain uses 1668mm gauge track, which is 5ft 5in, and Australia got a mix of 3ft 6in, standard gauge and 5ft 3in, as a result of choices made by the administrations in the various colonies around Australia when the first railways were built.
 

DavidGrain

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The story of the Irish gauge that I heard was that the first three railways in Ireland were all planned at different gauges. The Dublin and Kingstown, was built to 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1435 mm). The Ulster Railway used 6 ft 2 in (1880 mm).

According to Ask About Ireland, the Dublin and Drogheda Railway was proposed to be built to 5 ft 2 in (1,575 mm).
John Macneill, the engineer appointed to the D&DR, was advocating 5 ft 2 in
However, the story I have heard is that the gauge would be 4 ft 10 ½ in (1485 mm).

Now this might be an apocryphal story, but as I heard it the Board of Trade appointed a military engineer not a railway engineer to the Irish Gauge Commission who took the average of the three gauges and came out at 5 ft 3 in (1600 mm). I have done the maths and depending on which figure that you take for the Dublin and Kingstown this could work out.
 
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Fearless

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Gauge is a compromise on performance and construction costs, and Stephenson gauge came out on top....
It's a bit like VHS versus Betamax - Betamax was probably the better technology but the rest of the world went VHS because it was the default standard and allowed the best interoperability.

During the Gauge Commission's trials, Brunel's broad gauge performed consistently better than Stephenson's (one of whose trains actually derailed) and the Commission acknowledged its superiority, but it was a numbers game - as most of the country was laying what's now standard gauge, it made no sense to cut off the West of England. The Betamax analogy is spot-on.
 

furnessvale

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During the Gauge Commission's trials, Brunel's broad gauge performed consistently better than Stephenson's (one of whose trains actually derailed) and the Commission acknowledged its superiority, but it was a numbers game - as most of the country was laying what's now standard gauge, it made no sense to cut off the West of England. The Betamax analogy is spot-on.
However, history has proved the decision on standard gauge to be correct as demonstrated by the various pros and cons above. Even today, new dedicated high speed lines are built to standard gauge.
 

DavidGrain

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I believe that the old Dublin trams were built to Irish gauge of 5ft3in but the modern LUAS trams are standard gauge 4ft 8 1/2in as a condition of EU funding.

Belfast trams were 4ft 9in which seems a very odd gauge to choose.
 

furnessvale

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I believe that the old Dublin trams were built to Irish gauge of 5ft3in but the modern LUAS trams are standard gauge 4ft 8 1/2in as a condition of EU funding.

Belfast trams were 4ft 9in which seems a very odd gauge to choose.
Tram systems were often built to a slightly odd gauge to allow standard gauge wagons to use the system riding on their flanges. Without looking it up I am not certain which way the adjustment was made i.e. 4' 8" or 4' 9".
 

MarkyT

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...the modern LUAS trams are standard gauge 4ft 8 1/2in as a condition of EU funding.
Really? It seems an odd thing for EU to rule on, forever preventing the possibility of any tram train extensions onto main line trackage. Cadiz in Spain has new tram-trains so it's clearly possible to have non-standard gauge trams in the EU, and I'd have thought an argument could be made to use the 'Irish national standard' for such local interoperability if the promoters wanted that. I'm sure they looked into the issue closely though, and understand there are advantages in standard gauge too, notably the ability to buy 'off the shelf' tram designs from multiple vendors, but usually manufacturers ensure their bogies are designed to be easily adaptable for different gauge wheelsets.
 

MarkyT

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Tram systems were often built to a slightly odd gauge to allow standard gauge wagons to use the system riding on their flanges. Without looking it up I am not certain which way the adjustment was made i.e. 4' 8" or 4' 9".
Glasgow trams had a gauge of 4 ft 7 3⁄4 in (1,416 mm) to allow this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Corporation_Tramways#Track_gauge
Track gauge
Glasgow's tramlines had a highly unusual track gauge of 4 ft 7 3⁄4 in (1,416 mm). This was to permit 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge railway wagons to be operated over parts of the tram system (particularly in the Govan area) using their wheel flanges running in the slots of the tram tracks. This allowed the railway wagons to be drawn along tramway streets to access some shipyards. The shipyards provided their own small electric locomotives, running on the tramway power, to pull these wagons, principally loaded with steel for shipbuilding, from local railway freight yards.
 

DavidGrain

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Really? It seems an odd thing for EU to rule on, forever preventing the possibility of any tram train extensions onto main line trackage. Cadiz in Spain has new tram-trains so it's clearly possible to have non-standard gauge trams in the EU, and I'd have thought an argument could be made to use the 'Irish national standard' for such local interoperability if the promoters wanted that. I'm sure they looked into the issue closely though, and understand there are advantages in standard gauge too, notably the ability to buy 'off the shelf' tram designs from multiple vendors, but usually manufacturers ensure their bogies are designed to be easily adaptable for different gauge wheelsets.

If the EU were providing any funding they would have had the right to insist that standard components were used rather than the extra cost of non-standard items
 

AM9

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LU used a nominal gauge of 4 ft 8 3/8 in although I'm not sure if the nominal dimension has since been adjusted to sy=tandard gauge.
 

Fearless

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However, history has proved the decision on standard gauge to be correct as demonstrated by the various pros and cons above. Even today, new dedicated high speed lines are built to standard gauge.

Yes, but that wasn't the way the Gauge Commission was thinking - they got it right by accident, you could say. They went for the "greatest convenience to the greatest number" rather than what worked best. Interesting that they were proved right anyway.
 

MarkyT

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If the EU were providing any funding they would have had the right to insist that standard components were used rather than the extra cost of non-standard items
I'm not suggesting the decision to use 1,435mm is irrational, but I would be surprised if it was an EU condition of funding rather than something the promoters had already chosen to limit costs and widen the potential supplier base, although I would argue that the cost differential for 1,600mm wheelsets would probably not have been very great.
 

Ken H

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Thanks for all the insights into gauges. I had no idea this was so complex when I started the thread!
 

XDM

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Tram systems were often built to a slightly odd gauge to allow standard gauge wagons to use the system riding on their flanges. Without looking it up I am not certain which way the adjustment was made i.e. 4' 8" or 4' 9".

What was to stop these wagons carrying on in a straight line when the tram track curved?
 

Oxfordblues

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I was told by a man in a pub that the Irish sent an engineer over to report on the track gauge but he measured the distance between the outsides of the rails rather than the insides (that could be one of those apocryphal "Irish" stories!)

But we should be grateful to this hapless engineer because if Ireland had adopted the standard gauge there would have been train-ferries for through traffic and containerisation would not have been adopted as a way round manually-handling freight at both ports. This developed into the world-wide system of shipping we have today for nearly everything that's not a full shipload.
 

DavidGrain

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I was told by a man in a pub that the Irish sent an engineer over to report on the track gauge but he measured the distance between the outsides of the rails rather than the insides (that could be one of those apocryphal "Irish" stories!)

I have heard that same story about the Russian gauge also but it does seem more likely for the Irish gauge as it is 3 inches wider than the Russian gauge.
 

AndrewE

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Forget (track) gauge: Narrow gauge locos and rolling stock can be bigger than those on our standard-gauge track. It's loading gauge and axle-load that governs capacity. Yes, narrow gauge, when originally built for smaller vehicles, could cope with tighter bends and steeper gradients. Nowadays standard gauge TGVs etc cope with gradients that narrow gauge railways couldn't have handled historically.
What was to stop these wagons carrying on in a straight line when the tram track curved?
Tram rails have grooves as well, in case you hadn't noticed. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tramway_track#Grooved_rail. Also called Vignoles rail.
 

Dr_Paul

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Gauge is a compromise. Narrow gauge goes round tighter curves but has a lower ultimate top speed. Broad gauges can have a higher theoretical top speed and more stability with a wider loading gauge. Standard gauge is the perfect compromise allowing reasonably tight curves where required, a theoretical top speed where adhesion between steel rail and steel wheel becomes the limiting factor, and allowing a sufficiently large loading gauge as demonstrated by the USA and others.

I wonder if the London Docklands Light Railway would have been better had it been built to metre-gauge, taking into consideration that it has some extremely tight curves which require a very low speed limit. As the DLR is completely self-contained with no physical connections to any other line, its being of a different gauge to other lines in London would not cause any problems in that respect.
 

DavidGrain

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I wonder if the London Docklands Light Railway would have been better had it been built to metre-gauge, taking into consideration that it has some extremely tight curves which require a very low speed limit. As the DLR is completely self-contained with no physical connections to any other line, its being of a different gauge to other lines in London would not cause any problems in that respect.

But the DLR's entire initial fleet was sold to Essen which would not have been possible if they had been narrow gauge unless some other town might have bought them.
fe7640fa7d5f3a6ffdf08e7a306fb3eb.jpg

They are now up for sale again as Essen is going for a complete new fleet of low floor vehicles
 

NotATrainspott

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As BART has demonstrated, the fact that you can go for a different gauge for a self-contained metro network which might be technically superior doesn't mean it's actually a good idea. Realistically speaking if you want the most effective metro system you need to pick a well-used gauge. For essentially the entire world outside of the CIS that means 1435mm. Any benefit to Ireland of having a custom tram gauge would have to weigh against the disbenefit of needing essentially custom vehicles. It's not just the passenger vehicles you need to worry about - it's the wheel lathes and the S&C and the Unimog road-rail vehicles and all the other things which are available off-the-shelf in 1435mm gauge form and just aren't in 1600mm.
 

Chris125

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India is another good example - a few initial Metro lines were built to Indian Broad Gauge but they are now all constructed to Standard Gauge.
 

edwin_m

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Most of the Metro lines in Spain are standard gauge too, despite pre-dating the high speed lines and having no connection to them. There are also metre gauge lines but I think only Barcelona line 1 is broad gauge.
 

furnessvale

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What was to stop these wagons carrying on in a straight line when the tram track curved?
The flange rides in the slot of standard tram rail, but obviously NOT in Ireland as my post #14 pointed out!
 

Con

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AFAIK Standard Gauge was chosen for the Dublin Trams as 1. Cheaper ‘off the shelf’ trams from Alsthom and 2. Tighter curves possible than 5’3”. Nowt to do with the EU or funding conditions.
 
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