That infortunate British loading gauge!!

Already, DBS have undertaken trials of freight on HS1 so that Continental loading gauge wagions acn be delivered to London and a number of routes have been or are being upgraded to take bigger containers. As fuel prices rise, railfreight becomes more and more viable.

For passenger, 3 hours is taken as being the journey time under which rail definitely wins - but the past year or so has seen rail taking significantly more of the market on routes beyond 3 hours. If you think about location of airports compared to stations, check in, airport exit times and the length of delays when they occur on flights, then 3 to 4 hours certainly starts to make sense. If a train can cruise at 150 to 200 mph (the High Speed line standard), then 600 mile plus is perfectly possible within 3 to 4 hours (depending on intermeidate stops), and that would get you from Paris to much of England if the HS network existed.

On Loading Gauge, there are an umber of European "standards" just as there are in the UK. Double deck stock is just over 15' tall, yet the Berne loading Gauge is about 1' less. Double Deck trains have a number of advantages - half the bogies and hence major weight savings and thus energy saving, shoter platforms etc. a 6 car set of DB double deck stock will carry over 700 passnegers in considerably more comfort that the 10 car UK suburban set needed for the same number (or 7 x Mark 1 Ss!!!).

I do wonder whether on some of the 3rd rail network, it would at least be worth costing increasing all structures to 16' and comparing with costs of platform lengthening, which will also be likelyn to include the need to move signals and have locastions whether bridges/level crossings/lineside building make lengthening impossible. The OHLE areas have head-room down to under 13', and would need 17' to 18' to fit the wires in, so probably no go.

Steven

 

Less innovative? We invented it for heaven's sake. Developments elsewhere may have overtaken the UK in some aspects but we run the fastest diesel passenger trains in the world and our network is one of the busiest anywhere. I'll take that lack of innovation anytime. Once the high speed network develops beyond HS1 we'll be forging ahead again.

 

He has. Russia and Finland have a gauge of 5 feet, Ireland 5 feet 3 inches, Spain and Portugal 5 feet 6 inches so Decapod's statement "At least we have a track gauge the same as most of Europe, which is more than can be said of Spain, Portugal or Ireland!" is spot on.

 

True, there are a number of photographsd around that show clearances much smaller than wouldexist if it had been built to the Berne or any other "continental" gauge.

 

Has to be said our innovations, in the main, ended at about 1900. Churchward looked to France and the USA for modern steam, and every modern steam locomotive in Britain was based on Churchward's ideas. Name the three greatest steam engineers of the 20th Century: DeGlehn, Chapelon, Porta. All from abroad.

When it comes to Diesels you only have to look at the chronic unreliability of early diesels in this country to see how we lagged behind our continental counterparts. Rail manufacturers in the UK just weren't used to diesel construction - and had to learn from those who had trailblazed the way abroad.

Signalling - track circuits are an American invention, as are colour light signals. Without these modern operations simply couldn't happen, although it is true that we have taken these American inventions and run with them whilst their network lags behind.

Rail - we stuck with bullhead and chairs long after flat bottom had become prevalent abroad.

That's a sweeping generalisation, but basically I think that for much of the twentieth century our railways lagged behind those abroad - and in some respects still do.

 

Got your point now. Many of the early European railways were engineered by British interests. In the case of Germany the Stephenson company provided both loco and driver to start with. Once the gauge was established, with the aforementioned exceptions, then further developments were to the same running gauge.

 

Ah, the old "it's better elsewhere" train of thought. British railways are far from perfect but neither are the systems elsewhere. Last week a friend of mine travelled from Frankfurt on an ICE, widespread delays and a running average of 55mph. I'll accept that that is a single instance but the more I travel abroad, the more I realise that UK railways aren't as bad as people would like to make out.

 

That was not my intent. I am perfectly aware that all railways have their good points, and their bad points. I am a regular user of railways in this country, and 99% of the time they provide the service that I require with no fuss or problem. Our system, as has been pointed out, is one of the busiest in the world. I think a lot of non-railway people who complain about rail operations in the UK simply do not fully understand the rail system, and do not effectively plan their journeys. I know people who panic at the thought of changing trains.

My post was referring specifically to twentieth century innovation both here and abroad. I am firmly of the belief that this country's railways lagged behind others, in terms of innovation, for much of the twentieth century, and improvements have generally been based on inventions from abroad, such as the track circuit and colour light signals cited. I was not referring to the current situation, or indeed the quality of service provided during the last hundred years.

 

I know - but I wasn't thinking of who was first, only that most of Europe uses the same gauge as us.

 

A number of European countries bought their first locos from Tyneside - not just Robert Stephenson either - and more than one called the loco "The Eagle"! however, by the end of the 19th Centtury, cuitting edhge lcoo design was largely outside these shores and loading gauge was one reason. It also seems that axle limit may have played a part - ours could well have been too high! In Europe, axle-limits tended to be lower and I suspect this encourage bigger locos (more axles to spread weight) and thus anabled other developments. Most German Railways had Pacifics in our Edwardian era when there was just 1 in the UK.

Steven

 

I wouldnt say cutting edge was overseas, it was that more developed countries.. naturally developed their own and so didnt need to buy british, and more so competed internationally to the rest of the world with their products as we did.
as ralph pointed out, much of the empire was British steam, in fact going beyond the empire, look at this picture this German example was actually built in the UK:
http://www.trainsofturkey.com/w/uploads/Steam/56084_bb01.jpg
in Poland the Tr203 is a derivant of the WD 2-8-0.

It's when we started making diesels that it all went wrong... the americans were simply 30 years in technology ahead of the UK, which was recovering from the war and still replacing it's own diesel fleet 10 years after the US had fully dieselised and were exporting new diesels across the world to standard designs from production lines capable of building hundreds of that type a year, whilst we were still experimenting with 20 odd shunter designs in boutique quantities.

Maybe if in the 1950's we'd concentrated on going from steam straight to electric (we were one of the leaders in technology for electric trains at the time.. think woodhead) the future may have been very different.

 

Yeah but we didn't, and the reason so many HSTs are still in service is because hardly a Government has been prepared to fund a proper electric network, never mind on the GWML and the MML, not even to big places like Hull, Sunderland or the Lancashire towns that feed into the East and West Coast. It's a miracle that someone once pushed London - Norwich and King's Lynn through.
Yes, we run the fastest diesel services in the world, but only because we have no choice.

Double-decker or even Channel Tunnel loading gauge for HS2, I say, otherwise the great leap forward will be a hop into another backwater puddle.

Ahem, why isn't this thread in General Railway Chat?

 

Necroposting, I know - but it's a subject I find endlessly fascinating. I suspect that HS2 will not necessarily conform to European standards - between Brexit and the scrapping of the HS1-HS2 link as infeasible, HS2 is going to end up as a giant railway island (assuming it ever gets built/completed). Incidentally, the Polski Tr203 2-8-0 is a USATC S160, not a WD. Do I vaguely recall that some British preserved S160s are ex-Polish Tr203s?

 

One of the points about HS2 is that it is the start of moves to change the British railway network away from the historic (and restrictive) British Loading Gauge. Why, therefore, wouldn't it be built to the bigger European standard? To do anything less would cost us more in the future. The European standard is hardly likely to get bigger - the infrastructure costs to do that would make ours pale into insignificance. At least we won't be liable for paying the bill for that, but that, of course, is another topic altogether

 

One aspect seemingly missed is that many railway companies post the initial euphoria were not making that much money. The competition between the South Eastern railway and thee London Chatham and Dover nearly bankrupted both companies leading to the joint managing committee, the SECR.

The SER loading gauge was not the most generous to start off with and when contractors bodged the tunnels between Tonbridge and Hastings, only 2 rings of bricks, the simple solution was to put two rings inside. This worked at the time as SER stock was generally small. The issues arose as stock got larger. Capital being tight the cheapest solution was modern stock built narrow to fit the tunnels. This solution was followed by British Railways in the 1950s when the narrow bodied Hastings diesels were built. These lasted into the 1980s when the pragmatic solution of singling the lines down the centre line of the tunnels would allow normal stock to be used and the line electrified. Even the electrification was on the cheap as it is rumoured that if all the trains scheduled in the rush hour came to a stand and tried to start simultaneously the breakers would trip

The marginal gains from the cost and disruption of replacing all tunnels and structures would be difficult to find but when needing new stock its only marginal cosst in having bespoke sized trains made

 

There were/are issues regarding fitting new modern diesel locomotives with the required anti-emissions kit whilst still remaining within the British Loading gauge too.

 

Nobody has yet answered (or asked ?) the obvious question about gauging - does the railway create the limit or does the limit create the railway ?

When the railway was first built within the UK i is generally accepted that the gauging followed that of the old coal waggonways despite Brunel looking to use the broader 7ft gage following his analysis of speed and stability as locomotive development continued. The Government of the day adopted the "standard" gauge on grounds of both forward compatability and cost of conversion as it accepted that it would be cheaper to convert broad gauge to standard rather than standard gauge to broad.

Once the standard gauge was adopted within the UK and exported abroad by UK builders the restrictions of the UK "kinetic envelope" were becoming apparent and therefore the foreign "kinetic envelope" was expanded to take advantage of the space available. This became the point of divergence as the UK "kinetic envelope" continued to meet the needs of the Victorian Age and the growth of the towns / cities during the Industrial Revolution grew to the very borders of the railway's "kinetic envelope" thus constraining further growth.

The environment abroad was less developed and the larger "kinetic envelope" was allowed to continue once established as railways were expanded throughout the European mainland and is one reason why UK locomotives can operate on European railways but European locomotives cannot operate within the the UK - the kinetic envelope.

By transferring that argument - in the guise of HS2 / HS3 - to the modern day of increasing the "kinetic envelope" by new build, it appears to me that the basic question has been overlooked - does the time saving justify the extra cost of new infrastructure especially when telecommunications offers yet another option of face-to face meetings through video conferencing.

I may be wrong but I sense that European train operation offers 2 options that have not been fully quantified; the UK experience of frequent "short" trainsets at fast speed or the European experience of less frequent but lengthier services at high speed. With economists keen to undertake time / cost benefit analyses I wonder if this is one are worth further investigation. What, for example is the difference in leaving London for Leeds by ECML or leaving London for Leeds by HS2; what does the average businessman do with the 30 minute travel gain ? Start his meeting earlier, have longer period for lunch, have a longer meeting, return by earlier (faster) train and what time / cost saving has he enjoyed.

I do not consider myself a luddite but I do wonder if the UK has reached its speed potential for business travel and should accept both that limitation and its consequences.

 

Valid points, Fred, but one thing with HS2 is that it will free up some capacity on the existing routes without having years of delays and disruption, as we have seen with WCML etc. That point doesn't get pushed hard enough when arguing the HS2 case.