Trump Signs Executive Order Requiring Railroads in US to Adopt Three-Meter Gauge

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Well, why not? If we're going to go Albert Speer, let's go completely Albert Speer.

Full disclosure: NO, THERE IS NO EXECUTIVE ORDER REQUIRING RAILROADS TO CONVERT TO A THREE-METER GAUGE.

At least, not as of noon.

He had big plans. I read about this thing years ago online. Google "Breitspurbahn three metre gauge railway" and you'll come up with information on this scheme. Here's the story. It's in Hungarian, but Google will translate it for you.

12/16/2013 10:00 ZSOLT BALOGH

Adolf Hitler's Railway: The Breitspurbahn

My workplace in Germany regularly organizes model fairs in its private room. At such times, plenty of vendors arrive loaded with various old railroad models and books. I take almost every opportunity to look around a bit, well if I find something interesting. There are always plenty of really good books, only unfortunately all in German.

Most recently, however, I came across a book that I couldn’t leave behind: The book on the history of Breitspurbahn seemed interesting even in German, as there were plenty of rare and special old photographs included.



The cover of the book, the picture illustrates well with a traditional and a wide gauge locomotive what sizes it would have originally been about

I have previously written an article about Breitspurbahn on the Hungarian Wikipedia , and another article about it has appeared in the Machine Orange blog entitled " Monster Railway ". Since the topic is very special, I dedicate another article to this incredible plan too!

{snip artists' renditions of massive terminals, plans for locomotives and freight cars, etc.}

But what is the Breitspurbahn? It was a large-scale railway plan in the late 1930s and early 1940s, in which 3-meter gauge tracks would have connected the most important cities in Greater Germany, with trains 6-7 meters high and up to 20,000 tons. at a speed of 200-250 km / h per hour!

The idea was one of Adolf Hitler’s favorite projects.



At the top is the planned huge dome of the station, and at the bottom is a model of the city being rebuilt

{snip}



The future Berlin skyline new Südbahnhoffal

{snip}

Breitspurbahn

[brush]

1. What gauge are our railroads now?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. Standard gauge, 4 feet, 8-1/2 inches.

That's a little shy of 1.5 meters.

Track gauge

You're right; that is a weird number. Stranger still? DC's Metrorail is slightly narrower than standard gauge, at 4 feet, 8-1/4 inches.

If you know that, you're me.

Washington Metro

{snip}

Technical
System length: 117 mi (188 km)
No. of tracks: 2
Track gauge: 4 ft 8 1?4 in (1,429 mm)[3]
Minimum radius of curvature: 225 feet (68.6 m)[3]
Electrification: Third rail 750 V DC
Average speed: 33 miles per hour (53 km/h)
Top speed: 75 miles per hour (121 km/h); 59 miles per hour (95 km/h) (Revenue service)

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20140209143910/http://www.wmata.com/business/procurement_and_contracting/solicitations/uploads/RFP%20Energy%20Storage-Attachment%20B-Rail%20Car%20Performance%20for%20Design-Simulation.pdf

[brush]

3. Why on earthwould DC's Metro be narrower? What sense does that make?

And would standard gauge cars still be able to run on the slightly narrower DC tracks?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

7. I have no idea.

To the naked eye, it looks just like standard gauge. The only reason I found out is that one day as I was riding the Red Line, I noticed a Metro worker riding across the aisle from me holding a tool that I recognized as a track gauge. "Fifty-six and a half inches," I said to him. Nope, came the reply: fifty-six and a quarter inches.

You could have knocked me over with a track gauge.

[Towlie]

4. Question: Does this post have anything to do with current events?

 
?

Are you suggesting something along the lines of "history doesn't repeat but it rhymes" without coming out and saying it, or just sharing a random bit of world history?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

5. Yes. NT

[AmericanCanuck]

6. The width of two horses' behinds

The Width of a Horse's Ass!

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates.

Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe (including England) were built by Imperial Rome for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels, were first formed by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

So the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Specifications and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's patute came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Thus, we have the answer to the original question.

[brush]

10. So if two Roman war horses side-by-side could fit through a gate, the chariot they were pulling...

would fit too if it was no wider than the horses' asses.

Makes perfect sense.

[Poiuyt]

12. Does this have anything to do with the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

[brush]

13. Yes, quite, quite. Same kind of logic. A laden swallow would be hard to get down.

[Brother Buzz]

11. In the agricultural south, King Cotton determined the rail gauge

The south's railroad system used a five foot rail system that better accommodated the standard cotton bales and wagons.

In 1886, in a whopping thirty-six hours, they changed over to the standard gauge.

Over two days beginning Monday, May 31, 1886, the railroad network in the southern United States was converted from a five-foot gauge to one compatible with the slightly narrower gauge used in the US North, now know as standard gauge. The shift was meticulously planned and executed. It required one side of every track to be moved three inches closer to the other. All wheel sets had to be adjusted as well. Some minor track and rolling stock was sensibly deferred until later, but by Wednesday the South's 11,500 mile rail network was back in business and able to exchange rail cars with the North.

[Aristus]

8. Is this an attempt to (literally) de-rail Joe Biden's vision of expanded high-speed

passenger rail?

Jesus, we can't get rid of Trump soon enough...

[Towlie]

9. Could be. Since "mahatmakanejeeves" refuses to explain, I guess we can interpret it as we like.

 
?

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. See his latest narcissistic 'executive order' about architecture:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142651882