Debunking railroad myths

On another list-serve, we’ve been busily debunking that bit of netlore about railroad gauges descending from Roman chariot widths. I think Snopes has pretty well convinced everyone that this story is without factual basis, so further debunking is not necessary.

However, someone raised the following question:

=====

I seem to recall reading – though this may also be a myth – that before standardization, freight would travel part of its journey on rails of one gauge, and then have to switch to rails of another gauge. Railyards had to employ large crews of men to move cars from one set of wheel beds to another. When standardization came, this would force large numbers of unskilled laborers out of work, which led to some rather nasty strikes. Early in his Presidency, Lincoln had to send in the troops to put down one such uprising.

Again, this may be apocryphal, or mistaken in some of its particulars. Have you ever heard anything like this?

=====

Standardization did not come into full effect until after Lincoln died, but certainly they were beginning. Any truth to this?

– Beruang

Certainly apocryphal on a practical standpoint. Railroad owners aren’t stupid. What is cheaper: moving the freight from one train to another or lifting an entire car and it’s freight off the trucks and onto another set of trucks on a different track? Lots of unskilled labor? You don’t lift entire laden freight cars with muscle.

If I’m not mistaken Russia uses narrow guage tracks. And trains travelling to and from Europe have to change carriages.

If I’m not mistaken, the first railroad strike occured in 1877 on the B&O in West Virginia and spread westward. It came about as a result of waning railroad construciton, a depression in allied industries, and a slashing of worker’s wages. It was violently put down by President Hayes. This was long after gauge standardization.

Lincoln was a friend of the railroad, signing the 1862 Pacific Railway Act that joined the east and west coasts

Yep, I think that it happens as you pass into Poland from Germany, but it might be on the other side of Poland. I took a train to Moscow from Berlin and back. I slept through one change and was awake for the other. You don’t feel anything when they change the wheels over.

Now that I think about it more I believe that it changes over just before you would enter Russia.

It seems there are a wide range of gauges around the world, Spain having the widest: Railway Gauges Around the World Another link: http://www.railroaddata.com/rrlinks/Narrow_Gauge/more2.html

Spain has wide gauge rail, but Portugal doesn’t. I believe Portugal is like the rest of Western Europe. But trains in Portugal can only cross in to one country: Spain.

Why Portugal has never switched or Spain is something I have no idea about.

In Australia, our railway gauges have been a major historical balls-up. Pre- federation, the separate British colonies (now states) each went their own way on rail construction. New South Wales went for the 4 foot 8 1/2 inch British (and US?) Standard gauge, and Victoria opted for the Irish 5’3" broad gauge, resulting in sleeping passengers being woken by the infamous cry at midnight in the dead of winter “Albury! Alllll chaaaaaange!” Queensland took the more cheaply constructed narrow gauge of, IIRC, three and a half feet.

The most bizarre situation was in South Australia, which adopted the broad gauge, then later started building other lines in narrow gauge when the railways budget was tightened. Later, the federal government constructed the Trans-Australian Railway which crossed South Australia in a third gauge, the New South Wales standard gauge. This resulted in at least one town (I forgot the name) which had a shunting (marshalling) yard with complex pointwork laid out in triple gauge track. It became a mecca for anoraks worldwide.

The Trans-Siberian line that goes from Mongolia to Siberia does this at the border. It’s an interesting procedure to watch. Passengers get off the train, the cars are jacked up, then the under-carraiges are pulled out and replaced. I have some good photos of the process. It’s all done in a big shed, but it’s still a chilly experience at night, even in the summer.

It seems some Spanish trains have variable gauge and can cross from Spain into France and back (1,435 - 1,674 m) without stopping or changing anything. (Dunno, I think I’d rather fly). OTOH, the new High Speed Trains which I thought might be International gauge seem to be also of the Spanish gauge.

Other Spanish trains have solely international gauge (I have no idea what’s the use)
http://mercurio.iet.unipi.it/ave/es-locos.htm
http://mercurio.iet.unipi.it/ave/es-intro.htm
Also: the electric trains work at 25,000 volts. Wow! I learn something every day.

I once heard something about Spain and Russia choosing different gauges as a way of impeding invasions as Napoleon was still fresh in their memories.

No just freight but passengers had to change trains frequently because of rail gauge differences. And not just rail gauges: because of states rights issues, southern states refused to allow railroad companies to operate interstate, which led to much of their troubles when they had to move troops during the civil war.

This is documented at length in many books on railroad history. It is absolutely no myth. I just happned to have read recently Passage to Union : How the Railroads Transformed American Life, 1829-1929, by Sarah H. Gordon, a superb book on 19th century railroads and their social impact.

But any library will have many books on this.

Anyone care to explain what is meant by “anoraks” here? I thought it meant a hooded coat like a parka.

Yes, you are right. But it also a peculiarly British term for the people who wear them i.e. nerds, speccys and hence train spotters

It’s not very obvious to me which is cheaper. Simply lifting the entire car seems far more straightforward than moving everything out of a boxcar and into another. Even more so if you consider specialized cargo (liquid, ore, cattle, etc.) which require specialized handling facilities. In addition, in order to re-load the freight onto another train, you need another train waiting there insetead of just wheel assemblies.

So is there more information on the OP? Consider it debunked on the basis of lack of collaborating evidence?

It’s exactly what happens at the french/spanish border. The cars are lifted. And the passengers stay in the train during the process, which is quite long.

In the UK the anorak is considered to be an extremely uncool, unstylish garment.

Trainspotters are stereotypically male, wear very low budget spectacles, usually in thetheir teens though some are older and nerdy, able to quote obscure and arcane statisitics about trains and scheduling.

They also wear anoraks.

I thought this thread would be about “Does the United States standard railroad gauge derive from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot?”.

In the early days of American railroading, every major railroad company used different gauges, varying anywhere from 3 feet to 8 feet. It was very inconvenient and expensive, which is why they standardized the gauge. I don’t know about President Lincoln and the strike; I imagine that standardization did cause alot of freight handlers to lose their jobs, so it’s likely that violent protests did occur.

You have to remember how railroads evolved. They did not start as nationwide transportation systems. Originally, they were extremely short-line. Boston to Worcester, a distance of 26 miles, was a major line at one point. Each city, large and small, started its own railroad and there was no standardization of gauges, track, freight, timetables or anything else. (Remember that each railroad had its own time until nationwide time zones were put into place, I think in the 1880s.)

In addition, railroads were created under state charters, so that they could not operate out of state even if they wanted to. There was no national body of law to regulate interstate railroads; nothing like this had been needed before. (Even canals were state-chartered.) The slow development of railroad law from a series of local and state regulations to a nationwide standard (which was never really achieved in the 19th century) is a major theme of the Gordon book I mentioned earlier.

Each railroad competed with all the others. Large cities had multiple railroads and that meant multiple railroad stations. Chicago had half a dozens stations in what in now the loop; the multiplicity of tracks ate up huge amounts of valuable downtown space. If you needed to transfer from one railroad to another – and you almost always did in the 19th century – you had to physically transport yourself and your baggage from one station to another. The title of Gordon’s book, Passage to Union, refers to the creation of union stations where several railroads came together, facilitating the transfer from one to another.

This was not so easy at state boundaries. Dozens of little towns sprang up that were at state line transfer points where one railroad came to an end and another began. As I said earlier, this was an especial problem in the south during the Civil War. For another look at this, try Sinews of War: How Technology, Industry, and Transportation Won the Civil War, by Benjamin W. Bacon. Any of the big books on the war, Shelby Foote’s, for example, will also deal with this somewhere in their mass.

It wasn’t until the end of the 19th century that the growth of railroad trusts starting consolidating dozens of smaller railroads into true national systems. But there were still hundreds of short-line and specialized railroads in the country that kept to the old gauges, often because they could afford nothing but the older, cast-off equipment from the bigger railroads.

The transfer of freight and passengers from one gauge railroad to another is extremely well documented historic fact. There is a huge amount of collaborating evidence. Read a book. Better yet, read several.

Not finding any evidence to support something doesn’t mean a thing if you never looked in the first place! :wally