The Americas

by Michael Frewston

  And if the final outcome of this ‘gauge war’ had been 1524 mm, America would have settled on a gauge that was at odds with that already well-established in Britain, Europe and many other places in the world (though not, ironically, in the USA’s later nemesis, Russia, which itself was to settle on the use of 1524 mm gauge – see Part 4).

  The CPR/UPR was thus built, by an Act of Congress, to 1435 mm Standard gauge throughout, and facilitated a Standard gauge link from coast to coast. It shows that, even in a fiercely independent country like America, sometimes some central government involvement is necessary in the interests of both efficiency and ‘the common good’. It was a lesson that Australia had the opportunity to have heeded – but chose not to (see Part 6).

  I should add that the CPR and the UPR were not only intensely competitive, but each wanted to maximise the payments received from the government, as well as the attached land rights, which were based on the total distance of track they had built. Accordingly, each raced the other to see who could get to the lucrative Mormon settlements in Utah first, as well as increasing the payments and land rights they would be receiving, and simply ignored the previously-agreed meeting up point. So intent were they in this endeavour, that when they did meet up, in western Utah, they simply pretended that the other didn’t exist, and, instead of joining their Standard gauge tracks up, carried on past each other, building their own parallel lines far beyond the meeting up point.

  Eventually, Congress had to again step in and legislate a new meeting up point, this time at a location called Promontory Point in Utah. The last, golden, spike was driven on 10th May, 1869. Much of the now-superfluous parallel track was subsequently abandoned.

  Finally, we must not forget the fierce battles that occurred throughout the construction of the whole of this railway line, but especially in the prairies, between the railway workers and the Native Americans (or Indians as they were referred to in those days). As many as 20 000 lives were lost because of the fighting between red and white man over the land that had been arbitrarily taken in order to build the railway – land that had already been placed under control of the Native Americans during (as well as after) the Civil War. It must be remembered that many of the railway workers came from other countries (primarily Ireland and China), and – being essentially forced labour – were ill-equipped to fight the Native American warrior.

  Only when President Lincoln himself personally stepped in again and forged an agreement between the American government and the Native American chiefs was peace brought to the construction of the transcontinental railway.

  Bogie Exchange:

  By the 1880s, the gauge differences among America’s railways were causing huge problems in permitting the seamless transportation of both freight and passengers from one part of the country to another. While initiatives were already under way to convert all railways to a common gauge, that dream was still some years away from fruition. Until then, every break of gauge – and there were dozens – required expensive and time-consuming transhipment of freight, as well as passenger transfer, between vehicles of different gauges.

  R H Ramsey was an inventor. He came up with the idea of exchanging bogies of different gauges on, primarily, freight wagons, using a rather simple system. In principle, his system consisted of a pit, within which were tracks of the two gauges each side of the break of gauge, overlapping in the middle, and using a common centreline. Either side of this pit were closely spaced twin rails on which carrier bogies ran, supporting transverse beams.

  When a vehicle passed over the pit, the beams on the carrier bogies either side supported the vehicle, keeping it level, while the vehicle’s own bogies dropped away into the pit. New bogies, of the alternate gauge, were then wheeled into the pit from the opposite (exit) end, and both bogies and vehicle were pulled along together, the new bogies being guided into the pivot holes of the vehicle in the process. The crude simplicity of bogie attachment of American railway vehicles – held in place by nothing more than a central pivot and gravity – made the system feasible.

  Like so many apparently simple ideas, however, the devil was in the detail. Mating the new bogies with the central pivot as they were pulled out of the pit was surprisingly difficult, while the advent of continuously-braked vehicles soon made the system impractical.

  With the prospect of a common railway gauge throughout the USA on the horizon (see below), Ramsey’s Car-Truck Transfer system quickly disappeared into obscurity.

  There were other bogie changing schemes as well, often involving hoisting cars up and then changing bogies, though none was successful, and were quickly abandoned. Finally, the Grand Trunk Railroad, with much traffic between Standard gauge and 1524 mm gauges, experimented with variable gauge wheel sets. While initially moderately successful, they wore out very quickly. They also proved susceptible to snow and ice build-up in winter. The technology of the day simply wasn’t up to this kind of sophistication, and they too were abandoned. (See also Part 1 for bogie exchange and variable gauge systems in other countries.)

  Converting to Standard gauge:

  While there had been a number of smaller railways that, prior to the 1860s, converted from their original gauge to the gauge of the more major railways that they now started to link up with (often, but far from always, Standard gauge), it was the end of the Civil War in the late 1860s, along with the now-completed 1435 mm Standard gauge Transcontinental railway, that proved to be both impetus and catalyst for the myriad of railways now existing to consider just what gauge they should be running at. Simply put, the demands for recovery in the south, and the opening up of the west, made incompatible railways gauges a huge impediment.

  The first formal attempts at gauge standardisation took place among the three main Standard gauge regions that started to link up with each other, namely New England and much of New York, the mid-Atlantic states stretching from Pennsylvania to North Carolina, and the mid-west beyond Ohio. Both new lines and existing lines that connected with the main railways in these three regions all settled on Standard gauge.

  A second wave of gauge standardisation then followed, west of the Mississippi – but not to Standard gauge. Various lines in the states of Missouri, Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas had between them chosen the gauge of 1676 mm. Missouri in particular saw extensive railways at this gauge, such as those of the Pacific Railroad of Missouri, with some level of expectation that they would all eventually link up. There was at the same time little prospect – or so it seemed – of these lines linking up with those east of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. During the next twenty years, during and after the Civil War, the amount of 1676 mm gauge trackwork actually doubled.

  Meanwhile, the by now well-developed railways in the north and east had further established their use of 1435 mm (or the very slightly wider 1448 mm, as chosen by the Pennsylvania Railroad), and were looking to push on ever westwards at this gauge, the Transcontinental link naturally validating this strategy. They couldn’t get too far south at this gauge however – the south of course had adopted 1524 mm as its standard, and there was already quite a bit of rationalising going in railways settling on this gauge.

  By the early 1860s, the amount of 1524 mm trackwork almost equalled that of Standard gauge, at around 20 000 km. Indeed, a conference was held in Charleston, South Carolina, at which it was decided that the Charleston and Hamburg’s use of 1524 mm gauge could become the formal standard for the south.

  In North Carolina, on the other hand, a law was passed prohibiting the use of 1524 mm gauge in that state – not in the interests of any form of standardisation, but to force traffic to its sea ports, rather than on to the 1524 mm gauge railways to both the north and the south of the state without incurring a break of gauge. Settling on Standard gauge across the USA – 1435 mm or one of its variants – was indeed proving illusive at this juncture.

  It was in the late 1860s that the first positive attempts at standardising on a single gauge across the whole country were mad
e. The story following the Civil War is however incredibly complex, and I have resorted to a table to try and show some sort of timeline in how uniformity came about over the following twenty years or so.

  Note that both Standard gauge and the variant 1448 mm, 1461 mm and 1473 mm gauges, while permitting some degree of through running (see above), were still to a large extent an impediment to the seamless integration of the various railways involved, and it wasn’t until the end of the 1890s that 1435 mm Standard gauge became the country’s de facto standard. Even the PRR, for so long setting its own 1448 mm standard, to which many other railways adhered, eventually conformed to Standard gauge – though not without some objections, which were ultimately resolved. The conversion of the PRR from 1448 mm to 1435 mm nonetheless took place over a number of years, and only as part of the railway’s routine track maintenance.

  The following shows when each of the major railways that had chosen a gauge other than Standard converted, noting that for some railways this involved two or more stages in the process:

  Although the table above shows that the southern railways converted in 1886, and to the PRR’s 1448 mm gauge, in fact, there was an exception. As this announcement in the New York Times shows, the Kentucky Central Railroad was planning its conversion, to 1435 mm Standard gauge (and not the PRR 1448 mm), five years earlier, in July 1881. Its decision to convert to Standard gauge was based on the ability to link up with the Chesapeake and Ohio railroad, which was also going to supply the rolling stock and motive power.

  Would the other southern railways follow suit? As the table above shows, not at all. The southern railway networks subsequently made the decision to change from 1524 mm gauge in 1886 to 1448 mm gauge, not the preferred 1435 mm Standard gauge. But even this decision was not without some controversy.

  In February, 1886, the various southern railways met at a convention to agree on the proposed conversion from the 1524 mm broad gauge. The problem was that many of these railways had links with the Pennsylvania Railway’s 1448 mm gauge network, and were adamant that their railways should be converted to the same gauge. While the 13 mm difference between this gauge and true Standard gauge was not too much of a barrier to through running, it did still present a thorn in the side of most of the railways in the rest of the country that were now converted to 1435 mm gauge (if not already built to this gauge), and wanted to see this become the standard.

  At the convention, many arguments were put forth both for and against the use of PRR’s standards. Indeed, John Gault, the general manager of the Cincinnati, New Orleans & Texas Pacific Railroad, argued very forcibly for adopting true Standard gauge, stating in no uncertain terms:

  “I deem it of greatest consequence that the standard gauge of the country could be adopted by the Southern Roads. ...This is the first opportunity that the Southern roads have had to correct the unfortunate mistake made when the five foot gauge was adopted, and in correcting it we should take such action as will result in solving the question for all time. I insist upon saying to this Convention that the adoption of a 4 ft. 9 in. gauge is only a partial correction of the mistake…”

  Gault’s words however went unheeded, and the convention decided on going ahead with converting all the southern railways not yet converted to 1448 mm gauge.

  The conversion itself was a remarkable feat of planning, co-ordination and shear hard work by all involved. Just four months had been allowed between the convention and the actual change-over, scheduled for 31st May and 1st June, 1886. In that four months, nearly 20 000 km of track was prepared, involving the removal of most of the spikes on the outside, and every other spike on the inside, of one rail, and the placing of a new set of spikes, again on every other sleeper (tie), at the new gauge on the inside of that rail.

  Echoing what had happened to Brunel’s broad gauge lines in Britain (though on a far larger scale), during the 36 hours of the change-over, all the old spikes were removed from that one rail, the rail moved over 76 mm (from 1524 mm to 1448 mm), and all spikes hammered home. It is estimated (although no actual records exist) that some 75 000 men worked night and day to change the gauge.

  By the time it was all finished, trains were running almost a full service again, even to the point that much of the population had not realised that the gauge of their railways had been changed!

  In terms of the wider picture of gauge conversion in the USA, it was as much chance as anything else that 1435 mm eventually became the default gauge for US railways. If, for example, the Grand Trunk Railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, or the Lake Shore and Southern Michigan, had chosen something other than Standard gauge, America’s gauge map might well have looked very different than it does.

  Fortunately, however, what had already become Standard gauge throughout much of the developed world also prevailed in the USA. By the turn of the 20th century, few of the broad gauges were left, and what was left consisted mostly of minor branch lines that most likely were essentially abandoned anyway. Even the PRR gradually adjusted its gauge from 1448 mm to 1435.

  There is one aspect of the gauge change-over that is quite intriguing. The southern railways not only converted their track, but also of course had to convert their motive power and rolling stock, and in that same 36 hours. Contemporary articles and reports mention the use of ‘dished’ wheels on locomotives that could simply be reversed to change their gauge.

  The dished wheel allowed the wheel tread to be offset laterally from the hub, thereby altering the gauge when the wheel was reversed. However, the tread/flange must have been able to be separated from the ‘dish’, else the flange would end up on the outside when the wheel was reversed.

  Pennsylvania Trolley gauge:

  The potential for main-line railways to use street trackwork as a ‘short cut’ allowing freight cars to access industrial areas within city boundaries was never far from the thoughts of the builders of Pennsylvania’s passenger-centric trams and metro lines. Such lines were also the potential targets of takeovers by main-line railways. The solution – short-sighted for sure – was to build to a different gauge. Thus was born the gauge of 1588 mm.

  Quite why this gauge was chosen – and not, say, 1524 mm, which would have achieved the same purpose – seems to be lost in the mists of time. However, the most likely reason is that it was simply Standard gauge with an extra six inches (152 mm) added. Whatever the reason, and as always when logic and common sense are usurped by short-sightedness and fear of competition, the long term consequences have far outweighed any short term advantages in using a different gauge.

  As noted below (see trams and metros), SEPTA (South-Eastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority) wrestles with three different gauges: Standard gauge, and two variants – 1588 mm and 1581 mm – of the Pennsylvania Trolley gauge. In light of the huge distances that the entire SEPTA system covers, it is unlikely these gauge differences will ever be resolved.

  These gauge differences are even causing problems in proposed new transit lines. The Delaware River Port Authority (DRPA) is currently trying to decide on the gauge of its proposed waterfront rail line. Does it use Standard gauge, thereby allowing for connections and interoperability with neighbouring Standard gauge lines, such as the Philadelphia Belt Line (part of which would comprise the new waterfront line), not to mention being able to purchase ‘off-the-shelf’ equipment?

  Or does it use the Trolley gauge of 1588 mm, thus ensuring some degree of compatibility with much of the rest (but not all) of SEPTA’s system, which extends into Delaware? The money at the moment is on selecting 1435 mm Standard gauge, but the decision is still very much up in the air, and the DRPA is still conducting engineering studies as to the best solution.

  It does though show how being different – and usually just for the sake of being different – starts to become expensive. The costs of this study by the DRPA are reportedly in the US$10 million range and rising – costs (as well as time – two years so far and counting) that would not be incurred at all if all of SEPTA
’s system was to Standard gauge.

  Standard gauge visitors from other lands:

  America, over the years, has seen a number of railway visitors from other lands, all to Standard gauge. Some of the most significant – and impressive – were those from British railways before World War II, especially the crack express locomotives and their trains from the LMS and LNER.

  In 1933, the LMS 4-6-0 locomotive No. 6100 Royal Scot (currently on display in the National Railway Museum) was shipped over, along with a complete 8-coach train, and displayed at the ‘Century of Progress’ exhibition in Chicago. With some modifications to such things as axle boxes and the front bogie to better suit American track conditions, it travelled from New York to Chicago via a number of points in between, the use of Standard gauge and similar (if not identical) wheel profiles permitting such a journey. After the exhibition, it continued its tour by travelling to the west coast, returning to the east coast at Montréal via northern Canada, and covering 18 000 km in the process.

  Outperforming its North American counterparts (such as climbing through the Canadian Rockies to 1700 m without needing to be banked, as North American engines needed to be), it endured temperatures from +43 °C to –32 °C. Not a single spare part was needed during the tour.