Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Downtown
Lots of locomotives, especially on electrified railways, were no bigger than tractors. The fear wasn't that mile-long 20th century coal trains would run through the streets of Toronto or New Orleans, but that individual boxcars would be pushed onto piers or warehouse sidings using the street railway network. In some cities, where political opposition didn't prevent it, that's exactly what happened. And many, many American cities had steam railroad branches that ran right down the middle of the street. Many still exist.
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I wonder if the cities where that happened might be flatter than Toronto, where gradients are steep enough that every Toronto L.R.V has all wheels powered. Toronto's curves get as tight as just under 11 metres, and I wonder if the wheelbase of four-wheeled locomotives may have been too long for them.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Downtown
Sarajevo, it turns out, also regauged, in 1960, and that's probably why they were in the market for standard-gauge PCCs like the ones from DC. Since they went from 760mm to 1435mm, they probably did gauntlet track for a few years, or converted one depot/group of lines at a time.
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I wonder if converting from 760mm to 1,435mm might be much less complicated than going from 760mm to 1,000mm. Changing the gauge of a large, interconnected network is going to be much less disruptive if dual gauge track is possible.
Apparently Stuttgart did convert a little at a time with dual gauge track during the conversion period.
For an analogy, some electrified railway networks have been converted from one electrical standard to another. To convert, say between medium voltage D.C and high voltage A.C (both supplied by an overhead wire) it has to be done a little at a time with rolling stock in service during the transition being capable of running on both standards, never would the whole of a large network be converted at once.
Conversion between one standard supplied by a third rail and another supplied by overhead wiring could probably be done simply by dual electrifying the whole network during the fleet renewal.
Another one is water mains, if some city council plans to replace all the water mains in their city, they have to make proper contingencies while replacing them, such as running temporary pipes on the surface while replacement is done. This limits how much can be done at a time so water mains in a large city can only be replaced a little at a time, regardless of the reason for replacing them.