OT- Rail specifications and their effects

[Sanjuro]

Reading the thread about Railways in TW, this story came to mind...
http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Now that was a great read! Informative and amusing.

[Adm.Lee]

I could digress on a variety of rail gauges, but instead, I'll bring up something else with high-tech meets low-tech.

During WW2, one of the bottlenecks in Mitsubishi's aircraft production was that the production plant was not at an airport. Planes had to be moved, unassembled, through a village, on horse-drawn wagons. There was a tight turn that often took several back & forth moves to accomplish. After that, the planes were assembled and test-flown at the airfield. I suspect this was also a design limitation on the length of fuselage and wing sections.

I think my source is Caidin and Horikoshi's book "Zero!"

[Silent Hunter UK]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

Now that was a great read! Informative and amusing.

Not quite true in fact; only partly so

[Sanjuro]

The UK also has had differing rail gauges; various narrow gauge railways often for mountain use, or within factories (indeed, even the National Shooting Centre at Bisley used to have its own railway to connect to the mainline station at Brookwood) and the Great Western Railway was originally built with 9' gauge.
4'8.5" won though: a better compromise of stability with the ability to turn corners with a reasonable radius. If logic had been applied, perhaps 5' would have been settled on. Rather than describe tunnels as "slightly wider than the gauge" it is probably more accurate to say tunnel width is an indirect function of track gauge.

[Silent Hunter UK]

Originally Posted by Sanjuro

The UK also has had differing rail gauges; various narrow gauge railways often for mountain use, or within factories (indeed, even the National Shooting Centre at Bisley used to have its own railway to connect to the mainline station at Brookwood) and the Great Western Railway was originally built with 9' gauge.
4'8.5" won though: a better compromise of stability with the ability to turn corners with a reasonable radius. If logic had been applied, perhaps 5' would have been settled on. Rather than describe tunnels as "slightly wider than the gauge" it is probably more accurate to say tunnel width is an indirect function of track gauge.

Tunnel sizes can differ even on standard gauge - look up "loading gauge" for more info.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Only partially accurate... in a roundabout way...
'Tis a pity, but it was still entertaining!

As for the differing gauges, I don't think it's quite fair to start including them as they would seem to be later developments as rail transport became more widespread. That is to say, it would seem that railways initially developed along relatively level ground with few tight turns or steep inclines/declines to worry about. As the use of rail spread, they created solutions to more demanding landscapes such as different gauges to better handle tight turns and the funicular railway.

Having said that, my knowledge of the development of railways is pretty limited so please don't hesitate to correct my ignorance!