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So what exactly do gauging "measurements" mean?

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richieb1971

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W6, W8, W10?

What is the range? What does each mean?

All I understand is that W10 gives more clearance than W6 etc.

I also understand that on the continent the railways are built with better clearance and we are a bit behind due to the lack of Victorian foresight.

Thanks.
 
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CyrusWuff

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Standard vehicle gauges are defined in Railway Group Standard GE/RT8073 "Requirements for the Application of Standard Vehicle Gauges", which can be found on RGSonline.

To summarise: W7 is an "extension" of W6a that allows 8'0 containers to be used, W8 allows 8'6 containers, W9 and W9Plus are for swapbodies, and W10, W11 and W12 allow for 9'6 containers of various lengths.
 

civ-eng-jim

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The guidance in GERT8073 are gauges in to which a train's kinematic envelop must fit. Infrastructure additions must be included such as rail and wheel wear allowances, creep and settlement of the track, distortion of the track geometry over time, installation tolerances and minimum clearance between train and structures.

RGS online also have a good document on "Guidance on Gauging"

http://www.rgsonline.co.uk/Railway_Group_Standards/Infrastructure/Guidance%20Notes/GEGN8573%20Iss%203.pdf

Part 6 provides a brief guide to UIC gauging (Often incorrectly referred to as "Continental Gauge") It's far more conservative than the gauging on the UK network.

The only application in the UK is the CTRL/HS1 which is built/designed to UIC GB+.

I think it's somewhat a myth that all railways on the continent were built to a generous UIC-type gauge.

The fact we pioneered the railways and different routes were developed by different companies is why the gauge is a little restrictive rather than due to a lack of foresight. Or perhaps building a tunnel twice as wide as it needed to be at the time wasn't deemed economic.
 

swt_passenger

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There's a useful coloured diagram on page 114 of the Freight Route Utilisation Study (RUS) of a few years ago, (2007) - and one thing it emphasises quite well is that even W10 provides no additional height over a locomotive, it is all about the corners of containers. W12 is a wider gauge than W10, but no higher.

Compared to the RGS linked up thread, I find Chapter 6 of the Freight RUS is a much easier read as far as it summarises gauging proposals for the different routes:

http://www.networkrail.co.uk/browse...tilisation strategies/freight/freight rus.pdf
 

edwin_m

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Quite a bit has changed since 2007 though - see discussion elsewhere on the gauge for Oxford-Bletchley.
 

swt_passenger

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Quite a bit has changed since 2007 though - see discussion elsewhere on the gauge for Oxford-Bletchley.

Sure, the main point about it is the helpful coloured diagram that overlays the different gauge drawings.
 

LAX54

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W6, W8, W10?

What is the range? What does each mean?

All I understand is that W10 gives more clearance than W6 etc.

I also understand that on the continent the railways are built with better clearance and we are a bit behind due to the lack of Victorian foresight.

Thanks.

More likely as there were virtually no railways left intact in 1945 when they rebuilt (with our help and money) they built to a bigger loading guage.
 

AM9

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More likely as there were virtually no railways left intact in 1945 when they rebuilt (with our help and money) they built to a bigger loading guage.

I don't think so. If that was true then the German Kreigsloks wouldn't have fitted the lines that they were built for. Here is a video of a rally where one actually ran in 1994 on the Nene Valley line at Wansford:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGCmlJOBRuE

Unfortunately it can't be seen next to Flying Scotsman to show the difference in size.

If it took "our help and our money" to provide a universally larger gauge then every overbridge, platform, tunnel, and the space between multiple tracks would have been rebuilt. Does that seem right?
 
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HowardGWR

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More likely as there were virtually no railways left intact in 1945 when they rebuilt (with our help and money) they built to a bigger loading guage.

I should appreciate seeing your evidence and source for this money 'we' are supposed to have provided. As we were impoverished by WW2 and had twice as big a deficit to GDP ratio than we have now, as well as a big balance of trade deficit, I suspect it couldn't have amounted to much.
 
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edwin_m

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I should appreciate seeing your evidence and source for this money 'we' are supposed to have provided. As we were impoverished by WW2 and had twice as big a deficit to GDP ratio than we have now, as well as a big balance of trade deficit, I suspect it couldn't have amounted to much.

Would "we" be the Americans in this case under the Marshall Plan? 26% of which, according to Wikipedia, went to the UK.
 
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