British freight cars?

LAST EDITED ON Feb-16-03 AT 06:11 PM (EDT)

I've always wondered why most of the early british freight cars are smaller than american freight cars. Would someone mind shedding some light on this for me?My new e-mail is Arcanine241@yahoo.com
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RE: British freight cars?, ge44tonner, Feb-16-03, 06:40 PM, (1) RE: British freight cars?, Magick_maker, Feb-16-03, 07:15 PM, (2) RE: British freight cars?, Lone_Gunman_SG, Feb-16-03, 10:12 PM, (3) RE: British freight cars?, Magick_maker, Feb-22-03, 02:46 AM, (6) RE: British freight cars?, sstyrnol, Feb-17-03, 05:12 AM, (4) RE: British freight cars?, dvdhoven, Feb-17-03, 12:49 PM, (5) RE: British freight cars?, Stooopid_person, Feb-22-03, 07:43 AM, (7) RE: British freight cars?, sstyrnol, Feb-25-03, 05:22 AM, (8) RE: British freight cars?, doom262003, Feb-25-03, 02:48 PM, (10) RE: British freight cars?, rcp27, Feb-25-03, 05:48 AM, (9)

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There is the factor of the 'loading gage'. Basically, the loading gage is a set of dimensions that govern how large a piece of rolling stock can pass over a given route. It includes things such as width and height (at tunnels, bridges, station platforms, etc) length (swing-out on curves) and axle loadings. British railways are constructed to a smaller loading gage than are American railways. For example, American loading gage is typically 10 feet wide, about 16 feet tall, and axle load of 30 tons/axle max. British loading gage is about 9 feet wide, 12 feet tall, and 20 ton/axle. To fit these clearances, British rolling stock is necessarily smaller than American.
Several US locomotive builders have constructed engines for export to the UK. To fit the loading gage, the export versions are both more narrow and lower profile than the US engine of equivalent power output. The engines are often modified with C-C wheel arrangement in place of B-B to spread the weight out.
Dan Rohrback

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LAST EDITED ON Feb-16-03 AT 07:18 PM (EDT)

It's also interesting to note the extremes that some companies go to when exporting locos.I have personally saw a picture of a Dash 9 that had four two axle trucks (narrow guage) in place of the two three axle ones.EDIT:Loading guages in the US also varries by the company who owns the engines.For example:Some locomotives used by the military were built to a shorter height, due to the need to fit in tight clearances.Several power companies have special built locomootives, narrower and squatter than regular ones to allow them to go through rotary dump unloaders and to save space in their yards.Many mining companies modify their engines to fit a lighter load guage, to allow for cheaper track and cost effectiveness.

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you mind showing the rest of us this picture? (if you can that is)My new e-mail is Arcanine241@yahoo.com
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I saw it on here somewhere. Don't know what post it was under.

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Actually, you can't really compare American railways to UK ones. You might want to see it in a European range. One could think, it should make sense of having the same loading gauge throughout Europe! Then you could exchange loaded cars or train cuts liberally between each country. Especially given the fact that we are all now a big European family (haha...)! Now, it is sad (comparing to the relative success of American or Aussie railway systems), that exactly that is not the case!
The German limits are 3,15 m wide by 4,65 m high, the European standard is 3,14 m by 4,20 m and finally the British standards are 2,692 m by 3,861 m (odd numbers result from conversion from ft to metres!). So you see, the general european type train car won't fit UK routes. This concerns the width and height of the cars.
Second the length: As it is said, there are given limits concerning weight per axle and weight per car. If you have a weight limits, you want to have a car, that is optimally loaded. So, if you have a bulk car for e.g. coal, you will design it in a way, that it will be able to be loaded "full and down" (shipping term, referring to the car maxed out by space and weight capacity). That results in the relatively short cars. Each car is quite light, but you can load it to maximum.
In Germany we had also this type of car (short ones) in the 1920-30s, when the tracks were still not fitted to support heavy trains, where they designed locos with lots of wheels to spread out the weight and these short coal cars, which look rather odd.
Hope this helps!Cheers Sebastian

---
Sebastian
sebastian.styrnol@gmx.de

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Hi,Here is such an American loco in disguise as a British one. The very popular Class 66, built by EMD:Picture from the site of Heavy Haul Power.Dick van den Hoven

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>The German limits are 3,15 m wide by 4,65 m high, the
>European standard is 3,14 m by 4,20 m and finally the
>British standards are 2,692 m by 3,861 m (odd numbers result
>from conversion from ft to metres!). So you see, the general
>european type train car won't fit UK routes. This concerns
>the width and height of the cars.Erm, Eurostar?

------My favourite LUL train------

"The next station is Chancery Lane"...........Crash! Bam! Booom!...Sends 32 people in the hospital and makes all the other 1992 stocks out of service for motor bracket replacing...

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Hi,
good question! That's a newly constructed route. The maximum dimensions are always defined by the bottleneck of a given route cause you get a problem if your train is for example 3.14 by 4.2 and a tunnel in britain might be only 4 high... doo!!!

---
Sebastian
sebastian.styrnol@gmx.de

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LAST EDITED ON Feb-25-03 AT 02:50 PM (EDT)

It actually happens in Massachusetts with double-stacks in 2003. There is or are a bridge or bridges over the CSX Boston Line that prevent double-stacks from reaching Boston! They never have replaced the bridge(s), and so cannot run true double-stacks, even from Chicago here. Like British technology, this is an old, old right-of-way, and so has older clearances. The same problem in Britain, where at least some of the right-of-way probably dates from the early/mid-1800s. Back up what you said about the bottleneck.
Tom

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Something that hasn't yet come up. For a long time it was common for the freight waggons to be owned not by the railway company, but by the company that produced the freight, so that a coal company would own the coal trucks, and the like. Because most of these companies didn't care much at all about efficiency for the railway, they manufactured these waggons to be as simple and cheap as possible. Standard features on waggons resulting from this mentality that persisted well into the 60s and possibly 70s were very short 4 wheeled frames, no automatic brakes (only a handbrake) and low capacity. While this worked fine where you had a heavy steam locomotive to provide lots of braking force, that couldn't easily maintain speeds above about 30 mph anyway, but once lighter weight, powerful diesel locomotives came in, this sort of opperation was not possible. The diesel locomotives were capable of greater speeds, but the lack of braking became a big problem (look up brake tenders to see a solution), and ultimately the more modern waggons we have now became more common.Robin

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