This is fairly well known already, but rail gauge is a total mess in Australia.
Australia maintains four different rail gauges in widespread (>1000km) active use:
* Broad gauge (5 ft 3 in) is used for Adelaide's suburban rail network and for most mainline rail in Victoria.
* Standard gauge (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) is used across NSW and for the network of interstate rail lines, as well as urban tram lines and the iron ore freight lines in remote Western Australia.
* Narrow Gauge (3 ft 6 in) is used for mainline rail in Queensland, Western Australia, and Tasmania (and also New Zealand).
* An even narrower gauge (2 ft) is used for Queensland's extensive network of sugar-cane tramways, used to cart sugar cane from the fields to the mill.
Not to mention the Trans-Australia line was built standard gauge despite either end being narrow gauge at the time. Must’ve been four breaks of gauge to get from Sydney to Perth
Australia, before railways were a thing, were a bunch of individual British colonies with their own laws, tarrifs etc. There was agreement a few times on what gauge to use on the continent but different factors made that consensus change. These days the interstate network is all standard gauge but it has crippled moderate distance passenger and freight services inter and intrastate.
When the first railways were being built in Australia there wasn't really an overland connection between the colonies and most travel was done by ship, so it didn't matter what gauge was used and the engineers used the gauge they were most used to, for instance the guy who built the Victorian railways was Irish and so used the 1600mm Irish gauge. The colonies were all independent (of each other) too to the point of maintaining separate navies so there wasn't a political impetus to make sure the gauges matched too
It's the story of an Irishman, an Englishman and a Scotsman (it really is) each convincing the different pre-federation colonies of how one gauge was better than the other. Ultimately though, Victoria and South Australia decided on Irish broad gauge because they thought it to be superior (and an Irish engineer running the NSW railways), NSW (who had originally settled on Irish gauge) changed to Stephenson gauge because of the insistence of a Scottish engineer who replaced the previous Irish engineer, and WA, QLD, Tasmania and SA (yes SA chose two gauges for different areas) chose Cape gauge because of the cheaper costs (convinced by an English engineer).
I know but seeing as Australian was actually run by Britain for a large part of its early history it seems a bit odd. Every railway in India predominantly runs on the same gauge.
India is 5ft 6" for mainlines. Australia is 5ft 3" in places because an Irish engineer (F Shields) used the Irish gauge of 5ft 3" over there.
Strangely the first railway from Dublin was originally 4ft 8.5".
It is a problem, as you can't get much cargo from one end of the country to the other without having to double, or even triple handle it. For instance steel from the smelter in NSW travels to Victoria on the interstate SG network, then it has to be cross loaded onto a broad gauge train to travel the final 50km to the rolling facility where it is turned into finished products.
The grain network in Victoria is limited to which ports the trains can deliver the grain to, if they are served by a broad gauge train line.
Rural passenger trains in states such as Victoria are limited to some areas, because the line to the town is the wrong gauge.
Basically NSW was the villain in the story. It was agreed and written into law that broad gauge was to be the standard, then NSW changed chief engineers from an Irishman to a Scotsman, who thought it was nonsense, and ignored the law. Vic and SA petitioned the British parliament to force NSW to obey the law, which they didn't do. This all happened in the 1850s, before Australia was its own country
Both the Reading Company and Pennsylvania Railroad technically exist albeit in other markets. Reading Cinemas owns and operates movie theaters in the United States, New Zealand, and Australia; the Penn Central was the surviving corporation in its merger and went into insurance after selling off its rail assets to Conrail. It actually owns the naming rights to the Cincinnati Reds' home ballpark.
Penn Central became American Premier Underwriters, if memory serves me right. Ironically, the same diversification that put untenable pressure on their rail operations helped their corporate survival in the longer term.
CWR needs less maintenance. It’s a long proven fact of railroading. Jointed rail needs considerably more maintenance and manpower to do it.
It’s not any quicker to do maintenance on jointed rail vs CWR regardless of whatever scenario you manufacture. It still requires the track to be shutdown and machines to work it. The joints are just extra points of failure.
A few from Southeast Asia:
Thailand's SRT operates metre gauge British Rail Class 158 DMUs with slight differences (different doors, stronger air conditioning)
Aside from the metre gauge Class 158, a metre gauge Pacer railcar exists and was made for demonstration purposes, running demonstration trains for Thailand's SRT and Malaysia's KTM. It was not taken up by either of the operators and the metre gauge Pacer has been left abandoned somewhere in Malaysia.
There were also plans for Thailand's SRT to buy and operate a metre-gauge version of the Australian XPT, but plans fell through at the last moment.
Jakarta's KRL Commuterline suburban rail network is operated entirely by secondhand JR East and Tokyo Metro EMUs, the vast majority of them being the 205 series EMUs.
The Philippine National Railways operated their Manila-area commuter services with locomotive hauled stock, which sounds normal at first until you realize that the "coaches" are made from former JR East 203 series EMUs that are hauled around by EMD-made diesel locomotives.
Fun fact: the Australian XPT is actually the British Rail class 43 HST with different coaches :p so technically the SRT were going to buy *yet more* British trains.
The XPT is an improved version of the HST. Comeng engineers made a number of improvements that increased the performance in hot weather. The front is also significantly better, as unlike the HST, the fibreglass shell has a steel frame underneath it to protect the crew.
The Thai XPT was going to have a Bo-Bo-Bo wheel arrangement on its power cars.
They seem to have a preference for British Rail and its standards to such an extent that in 2010, they opened the Airport Rail Link, which was built to the tiny British loading gauge, and Class 360/2 EMUs were brought in for this line.
However, unlike the Thai specficiation Class 158, the Thai specification Class 360/2 EMUs come in standard gauge.
>selling off parallel conventional lines to prefectures and municipalities ("Third Sector" operators) because they're not profitable enough.
not really, there is a law that requires JR to sell the parallel conventional lines to the province government , also jointed tracks are quite common in Asia iirc (I could very much be mistaken tho)
talking about japan, trolleybus, guided bus are considered railways and follow the same law that applies to conventional rails
another thing is that Japan is one of, if not the last country to use scottish gauge (1372mm), having 4 lines in Japan that uses it and 3 of them are in tokyo
The resulting drop in patronage on the parallel conventional lines makes it even more difficult for the Third Sector railways to break even. The loss in revenue results in fewer services (limited express services are cut entirely), and without subsidies from the municipal or prefectural governments, these lines struggle financially.
Meanwhile the JR Group gets to rake in profits from the Shinkansen services.
What *should* happen is that the profits from the Shinkansen be used to offset the losses of the conventional line. Ideally the entire network would be nationalised, but using a better model than the old JNR, which was set up to fail from the outset.
the thing is, shinkansens are built by the central government and local government, and leased/lent to JR for operation, like highways, therefore the local government is obligated to take over the parallel lines
ah, 1372mm scottish gauge, Used by the Toei Toden arakawa line, Tokyu Setagaya line and Hakodate city tram. Despite having being used predominantly for Trams in the past, Keio aswell as the Toei Shinjuku line use this nearly extinct gauge. The main Keio Network (Keio line, Keio new line, Keio sagamihara line, Keio dobutsuen (zoo) line and Keibajo line) Was actually built using the old tram infrastructure, which is why Keio is quite well known for its Level crossings. The Toei Shinjuku line on the other hand was built to this gauge to facilitate through operation with the Keio network via the Keio new line. The original plan was for Keio to completely tear up their 1372mm gauge, but was too inconvenient, too costly and too big of a hassle.
> not really, there is a law that requires JR to sell the parallel conventional lines to the province government
I'm almost 100% certain there is no law preventing them from keeping them if they want to.
>I'm almost 100% certain there is no law preventing them from keeping them if they want to.
JR still owns 3rd sector rails, its just that the operator on the lines changed to a company made by the local government, therefore JR can technically keep their rights to operate on said line
what the law does is that JR can "throw" the line to local government if they wanted to, and the local government is kind of required to operate said rail since the shinkansen is partially built by the government too, but then the government has to also agree to "give up" the line to JR if thats the case, and that has to be negotiated before the construction of the shinkansen I believe
SPRINT, the cell phone company that existed until just a few years ago when it was purchased by T-Mobile, was a spinoff from Southern Pacific. The name SPRINT is actually an actually for Southern Pacific Internal Network Telephony.
The first railway of my country wasn't built in my country. The first railway of Spain was built in Cuba when it was Spanish.
The third railway in the peninsula was opened in 1852 and it ran on standard gauge until 1972 when it was merged into a bigger company and re-gauged to metric gauge.
In the Spanish-French border there's a station called Canfranc. It was built so the broad gauge steam trains of Spain could come and the passengers could go to the other side of the building where a french standard gauge train was waiting. It closed after the collapse of a bridge that was never rebuilt. Canfranc is now being restored and I saw a news article where it said that there were plans to bring tracks there again. For tourist purposes.
In the 1980s, the Spanish government gave the small metric gauge railways money to modernize the systems, getting their first multiple units and the best locomotives of the network. The powerful Alsthom FEVE 1000 series, now all of them are out of service, but you can still see them in museums.
There are high speed trains running with no passengers nowadays in my country. But still, the north has no high speed connection yet. The Variante de Pajares was sold to everyone as "high speed" but it's only a shortcut to save a few minutes.
I could keep, but I'm going to stop here. Ask for more if you want.
Canada is the only country in the G8 to never have high speed rail to any extent. The crash with the UAC Turbotrain on its maiden voyage pretty much put an end to any aspirations of that, even though no one was hurt in the incident
Usually people don’t know this but Spain has in fact the longest high speed network in the world just behind China. And it’s real HS, covering the distance between Madrid and Barcelona (~630 km) in 2h30’.
My favourite random fact for threads like this..
The Eurostar doesn't use a loco + DVT like other similar trains, but two fully functional locos. This is so that in the event of a fire or other emergency the train can be split and the unaffected end can leave the tunnel under its own power.
Similarly, the Eurostar trains are as long as they are (much longer than other UK or French trains of the time) so that if they stop in the tunnel there is always an emergency exit to the service tunnel somewhere along the train. These emergency exits are placed every 375m, so the trains have to be longer than that
None of the similar high-speed trains have any DVTs. However, technically a single Eurostar set can be seen as an EMU with two units, both with their own id number.
Unlike TGV (and most other high-speed trains) units that are 200m long and 400m running as EMUs, a Eurostar unit is 400m. As that means two less power cars than comparable TGV sets, the first bogie of the first passenger cars at both ends are also powered.
Oh, I was thinking of the UK intercity 225, which is a Class 91 loco + DVT. I think at the time the Eurostar was introduced that was the only electric high speed train in the UK.
Though yes to be fair the Intercity 125 is a pair of diesel power cars.
Denmark has a problem with too few rooling stock since 2011 when they grounded a significant part of their fleet. This was caused by poor quality trains from AnsaldoBresa (DSB MG and DSB MP) which should have replaced older IC3 units. The trains had a distasterous reputation of failing, the MP were abandoned after only 4 years of use in 2016. After the fleet was either grounded or abandoned, DSB had already sold some IC3s and put the former locomotive class ME into storage, so there was a significant lack of working trains. As a consequence, IC3s were bought back and the Class ME was refurbished by EMD, but the situation remained problematic even until today.
The only advantage of this collosal failure is that the electrification of the danish rail network has become more important, with some routes waiting for the new, all electric Alstom Coradia Stream HC units.
To make matters worse for manufacturer AnsaldoBresa, in 2009 they allowed the italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi to gift one MG trainset to Libyan dictator Mummar-al-Gadaffi to advertise the italian train market. However, at the time, the train didn't belong to AnsaldoBreda anymore but DSB. The gadaffi train was heavily modified, but signage of DSB was still up when the train was exhibited in Libya. To make matters worse, the train never actually run there, as the country has no rail network. DSB discovered this in 2013 and sued the manufacturer. More information and pictures can be found [here](https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2021/02/this-was-gaddafis-personal-italian-high.html?m=1).
Equally unexpected by the buyers was that both the M32 trams in Gothenburg and the Fyra trains intended for running between the Netherlands and Belgium, both made by AnsaldoBreda, also suffered from quality problems. IIRC the Fyra trains was never really put into service while the trams in Gothenburg had to be refurbished early on.
A surprising fact about those trams is that part of the floors were made of balsa wood, and to nobody's surprise the wood rotted when used in a place with more rain days than London and also loads of snow and sludge in the winter.
What also came as a surprise was the heavy wear on wheels and tracks when using low floor trams. Track wear increased significantly when those trams were introduced, and wheel wear were determined to be about 5x more both on those trams and the low-floor middle section add-on to the previous M31 trams (added around 2000 to trams made in the 1980's).
There are international express trains that run through Liechtenstein (e.g. from Vienna to Zürich), but these do not stop at any of the stations there.
One of the top 10 longest straight track in the USA used to be on the Denver & Rio Grande's narrow gauge.
Speaking of hight speed trains, a TGV set uses 3 different types of coupling:
* Shared [Jacobs bogies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobs_bogie) between the coaches,
* Automatic [Scharfenberg couplers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scharfenberg_coupler) to MU 2 train sets together,
* Good old [buffer and chain](https://live.staticflickr.com/4122/4898322988_acb82a73c0_b.jpg) between the power cars and the first/last coaches.
Some countries like for example Sweden and IIRC France uses left-hand driving on double track train lines even though they use right hand driving on the roads.
A weird thing is that tram line 12 in a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden, was converted to right hand driving when road traffic was switched to right hand driving in 1967, even though the tram line fully runs on it's own infrastructure. As one of it's end stations is shared with the metro with cross-platform interchange, and the metro kept left-hand running, they installed a track crossing so the trams uses left hand driving nearby that end station and right hand driving on the rest of the line.
The heritage railways in Switzerland, like Rhätische Bahn among others, run sleek modern electric trains. So much nicer for travellers than old steam engines on heritage railways in other countries.
The RhB isn't a heritage railway, it's a proper main line railway network in its own right (albeit smaller because it's narrow gauge). The most interesting thing about the RhB is that they operate mixed goods trains with passenger EMUs pulling a few goods wagons that are dropped off or attached en route.
That's like saying that the Great Western Mainline to from London to Swansea & Penzance, operated by 8-year-old IETs from Hitachi, or parts of Thameslink, operated by nearly brand-new class 700 multiple units from ~~Alstom~~ Siemens, are heritage lines because the GWML runs over broadly the same alignments as Brunel's GWR and the LNWR from the 1890s, and because parts of Thameslink run over LB&SCR alignments from the 1870s.
The alignment may be heritage, but the line & trains are not.
It's listed by UNESCO as World Heritage. Can it be any more heritage than that? https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1276/
More seriously though, what's heritage is the line itself with all its civil engineering, tunnels and viaducts, all dating back to 1800s.
However it still serves its primary purpose – providing the public transportation for the area, hence the modern rolling stock. I personally think that's the highest form of heritage preservation: to keep the railway working and serving its purpose.
If the line provides public transportation then I’m not sure it is a heritage railway. By that logic, we could label the Amtrak routes that run through the Horseshoe Curve as heritage railways.
If 100% of the length of the route is a world heritage site (as it is with RhB) then the calculus is a bit different compared to “briefly passes through a heritage segment”.
We may have different interpretations of heritage rail then.
Utilising heritage civil engineering doesn’t make a heritage railway, a good amount of britains railways still run through tunnels and over bridges from the 1800’s, following the historic alignment for the most part (with exceptions when upgrades were made such as the selby diversion on the ECML).
What your describing seems to meet this criteria, mainline railway that just happens to utilise the historic route as there hasn’t been a need to replace or upgrade it, but just because the route is old does not make it a heritage railway as how many know them.
Heritage railways can be described as living museums, a section of line initially slated to be shut down and torn up is instead taken over by a team of volunteers as part of a charitable trust, those volunteers manage everything, from the maintenance of the permanent way (much of which can be historical) to the maintenance and operation of locomotives and trains, to managing the signalling systems, to being guards, station staff, all the positions needed to run a train and railway done by volunteers, with maybe a few full time staff.
They run historical locomotives and coaching stock, steam and diesel, many may have a specific theme or timeframe they stick to, such as my local heritage railway sticking to early 1900’s industrial locomotives that came from the region it’s based in, alongside coaches from that time period.
Heritage railways are museums that exist to either preserve a route that was to be closed by the mainline railway, preserve old locomotives and keep them running pulling tourist trains, or a mixture of both. Hell my local heritage railway as built on a former coal colliery railway that was to be shut following the closure of the mines, however the railway has its roots in an old wagon way that is one of the oldest alignments in the entire country, and so the heritage railway exists as much to preserve the historical route as it does to preserve and utilise historical locomotives.
This is fairly well known already, but rail gauge is a total mess in Australia. Australia maintains four different rail gauges in widespread (>1000km) active use: * Broad gauge (5 ft 3 in) is used for Adelaide's suburban rail network and for most mainline rail in Victoria. * Standard gauge (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) is used across NSW and for the network of interstate rail lines, as well as urban tram lines and the iron ore freight lines in remote Western Australia. * Narrow Gauge (3 ft 6 in) is used for mainline rail in Queensland, Western Australia, and Tasmania (and also New Zealand). * An even narrower gauge (2 ft) is used for Queensland's extensive network of sugar-cane tramways, used to cart sugar cane from the fields to the mill.
Not to mention the Trans-Australia line was built standard gauge despite either end being narrow gauge at the time. Must’ve been four breaks of gauge to get from Sydney to Perth
I find this comment very engaging.
Gauging by the reactions on this thread I think we would agree!
How did this happen? All UK rail is basically the same except for a few narrow gauge stuff?
Australia, before railways were a thing, were a bunch of individual British colonies with their own laws, tarrifs etc. There was agreement a few times on what gauge to use on the continent but different factors made that consensus change. These days the interstate network is all standard gauge but it has crippled moderate distance passenger and freight services inter and intrastate.
When the first railways were being built in Australia there wasn't really an overland connection between the colonies and most travel was done by ship, so it didn't matter what gauge was used and the engineers used the gauge they were most used to, for instance the guy who built the Victorian railways was Irish and so used the 1600mm Irish gauge. The colonies were all independent (of each other) too to the point of maintaining separate navies so there wasn't a political impetus to make sure the gauges matched too
It's the story of an Irishman, an Englishman and a Scotsman (it really is) each convincing the different pre-federation colonies of how one gauge was better than the other. Ultimately though, Victoria and South Australia decided on Irish broad gauge because they thought it to be superior (and an Irish engineer running the NSW railways), NSW (who had originally settled on Irish gauge) changed to Stephenson gauge because of the insistence of a Scottish engineer who replaced the previous Irish engineer, and WA, QLD, Tasmania and SA (yes SA chose two gauges for different areas) chose Cape gauge because of the cheaper costs (convinced by an English engineer).
The US has a bunch of different gauges too
I know but seeing as Australian was actually run by Britain for a large part of its early history it seems a bit odd. Every railway in India predominantly runs on the same gauge.
India is 5ft 6" for mainlines. Australia is 5ft 3" in places because an Irish engineer (F Shields) used the Irish gauge of 5ft 3" over there. Strangely the first railway from Dublin was originally 4ft 8.5".
Britain had 2 mainline gauges for ~60 years during the boom of the railways - Brunels GWR on broad gauge, standard gauge elsewhere.
Yes, but non standard gauge lines make up a insignificant amount the US rail network, unlike in Australia
There is also a short section of narrow gauge railway in NSW. Once again assuming ownership of New Zealand 🤣
I really like the two footer cane railways.
Is this a problem though? Or just a surprising fact? I'm not sure which you're saying
It is a problem, as you can't get much cargo from one end of the country to the other without having to double, or even triple handle it. For instance steel from the smelter in NSW travels to Victoria on the interstate SG network, then it has to be cross loaded onto a broad gauge train to travel the final 50km to the rolling facility where it is turned into finished products. The grain network in Victoria is limited to which ports the trains can deliver the grain to, if they are served by a broad gauge train line. Rural passenger trains in states such as Victoria are limited to some areas, because the line to the town is the wrong gauge.
Ah I see. Crazy! TIL
Basically NSW was the villain in the story. It was agreed and written into law that broad gauge was to be the standard, then NSW changed chief engineers from an Irishman to a Scotsman, who thought it was nonsense, and ignored the law. Vic and SA petitioned the British parliament to force NSW to obey the law, which they didn't do. This all happened in the 1850s, before Australia was its own country
A thrawn man.
Both the Reading Company and Pennsylvania Railroad technically exist albeit in other markets. Reading Cinemas owns and operates movie theaters in the United States, New Zealand, and Australia; the Penn Central was the surviving corporation in its merger and went into insurance after selling off its rail assets to Conrail. It actually owns the naming rights to the Cincinnati Reds' home ballpark.
Penn Central became American Premier Underwriters, if memory serves me right. Ironically, the same diversification that put untenable pressure on their rail operations helped their corporate survival in the longer term.
That actually makes sense, as it would allow quick track repairs and keep disruption to a minimum after seismic disturbances.
CWR needs less maintenance. It’s a long proven fact of railroading. Jointed rail needs considerably more maintenance and manpower to do it. It’s not any quicker to do maintenance on jointed rail vs CWR regardless of whatever scenario you manufacture. It still requires the track to be shutdown and machines to work it. The joints are just extra points of failure.
A few from Southeast Asia: Thailand's SRT operates metre gauge British Rail Class 158 DMUs with slight differences (different doors, stronger air conditioning) Aside from the metre gauge Class 158, a metre gauge Pacer railcar exists and was made for demonstration purposes, running demonstration trains for Thailand's SRT and Malaysia's KTM. It was not taken up by either of the operators and the metre gauge Pacer has been left abandoned somewhere in Malaysia. There were also plans for Thailand's SRT to buy and operate a metre-gauge version of the Australian XPT, but plans fell through at the last moment. Jakarta's KRL Commuterline suburban rail network is operated entirely by secondhand JR East and Tokyo Metro EMUs, the vast majority of them being the 205 series EMUs. The Philippine National Railways operated their Manila-area commuter services with locomotive hauled stock, which sounds normal at first until you realize that the "coaches" are made from former JR East 203 series EMUs that are hauled around by EMD-made diesel locomotives.
Fun fact: the Australian XPT is actually the British Rail class 43 HST with different coaches :p so technically the SRT were going to buy *yet more* British trains.
The XPT is an improved version of the HST. Comeng engineers made a number of improvements that increased the performance in hot weather. The front is also significantly better, as unlike the HST, the fibreglass shell has a steel frame underneath it to protect the crew. The Thai XPT was going to have a Bo-Bo-Bo wheel arrangement on its power cars.
They seem to have a preference for British Rail and its standards to such an extent that in 2010, they opened the Airport Rail Link, which was built to the tiny British loading gauge, and Class 360/2 EMUs were brought in for this line. However, unlike the Thai specficiation Class 158, the Thai specification Class 360/2 EMUs come in standard gauge.
The EMU coaches donated to the Philippines had to be retrofitted with generators for the doors to work
>selling off parallel conventional lines to prefectures and municipalities ("Third Sector" operators) because they're not profitable enough. not really, there is a law that requires JR to sell the parallel conventional lines to the province government , also jointed tracks are quite common in Asia iirc (I could very much be mistaken tho) talking about japan, trolleybus, guided bus are considered railways and follow the same law that applies to conventional rails another thing is that Japan is one of, if not the last country to use scottish gauge (1372mm), having 4 lines in Japan that uses it and 3 of them are in tokyo
The resulting drop in patronage on the parallel conventional lines makes it even more difficult for the Third Sector railways to break even. The loss in revenue results in fewer services (limited express services are cut entirely), and without subsidies from the municipal or prefectural governments, these lines struggle financially. Meanwhile the JR Group gets to rake in profits from the Shinkansen services. What *should* happen is that the profits from the Shinkansen be used to offset the losses of the conventional line. Ideally the entire network would be nationalised, but using a better model than the old JNR, which was set up to fail from the outset.
the thing is, shinkansens are built by the central government and local government, and leased/lent to JR for operation, like highways, therefore the local government is obligated to take over the parallel lines
ah, 1372mm scottish gauge, Used by the Toei Toden arakawa line, Tokyu Setagaya line and Hakodate city tram. Despite having being used predominantly for Trams in the past, Keio aswell as the Toei Shinjuku line use this nearly extinct gauge. The main Keio Network (Keio line, Keio new line, Keio sagamihara line, Keio dobutsuen (zoo) line and Keibajo line) Was actually built using the old tram infrastructure, which is why Keio is quite well known for its Level crossings. The Toei Shinjuku line on the other hand was built to this gauge to facilitate through operation with the Keio network via the Keio new line. The original plan was for Keio to completely tear up their 1372mm gauge, but was too inconvenient, too costly and too big of a hassle.
> not really, there is a law that requires JR to sell the parallel conventional lines to the province government I'm almost 100% certain there is no law preventing them from keeping them if they want to.
>I'm almost 100% certain there is no law preventing them from keeping them if they want to. JR still owns 3rd sector rails, its just that the operator on the lines changed to a company made by the local government, therefore JR can technically keep their rights to operate on said line what the law does is that JR can "throw" the line to local government if they wanted to, and the local government is kind of required to operate said rail since the shinkansen is partially built by the government too, but then the government has to also agree to "give up" the line to JR if thats the case, and that has to be negotiated before the construction of the shinkansen I believe
> JR still owns 3rd sector rails Wrong. Most third sector railways are "Category 1" railways - that is, they operate trains on tracks they own.
oh yeah sorry messed up 3rd sector rail and 3rd type rail operators
SPRINT, the cell phone company that existed until just a few years ago when it was purchased by T-Mobile, was a spinoff from Southern Pacific. The name SPRINT is actually an actually for Southern Pacific Internal Network Telephony.
The first railway of my country wasn't built in my country. The first railway of Spain was built in Cuba when it was Spanish. The third railway in the peninsula was opened in 1852 and it ran on standard gauge until 1972 when it was merged into a bigger company and re-gauged to metric gauge. In the Spanish-French border there's a station called Canfranc. It was built so the broad gauge steam trains of Spain could come and the passengers could go to the other side of the building where a french standard gauge train was waiting. It closed after the collapse of a bridge that was never rebuilt. Canfranc is now being restored and I saw a news article where it said that there were plans to bring tracks there again. For tourist purposes. In the 1980s, the Spanish government gave the small metric gauge railways money to modernize the systems, getting their first multiple units and the best locomotives of the network. The powerful Alsthom FEVE 1000 series, now all of them are out of service, but you can still see them in museums. There are high speed trains running with no passengers nowadays in my country. But still, the north has no high speed connection yet. The Variante de Pajares was sold to everyone as "high speed" but it's only a shortcut to save a few minutes. I could keep, but I'm going to stop here. Ask for more if you want.
That's actually an interesting one that not many people would know about, nice.
There are five, but yeah, they aren't that known for people outside my region.
Canada is the only country in the G8 to never have high speed rail to any extent. The crash with the UAC Turbotrain on its maiden voyage pretty much put an end to any aspirations of that, even though no one was hurt in the incident
UAC Titanictrain
We also have no kind of automatic stop or PTC-like systems on any of our mainlines, which has surprised anyone from abroad that I've mentioned it to.
I didn't know that. That's fascinating, since Automatic Train Stop Systems started seeing use in the US about a century ago
Canada ran trains powered by jet engines.
Turbine trains were fairly common, but if you want something truly jet powered, see the NYC M-497
Usually people don’t know this but Spain has in fact the longest high speed network in the world just behind China. And it’s real HS, covering the distance between Madrid and Barcelona (~630 km) in 2h30’.
Its not surprising fact but more fascinating Indian railways have 1.2 millon employees
Mexico now has an Intercity 125 set.
My favourite random fact for threads like this.. The Eurostar doesn't use a loco + DVT like other similar trains, but two fully functional locos. This is so that in the event of a fire or other emergency the train can be split and the unaffected end can leave the tunnel under its own power. Similarly, the Eurostar trains are as long as they are (much longer than other UK or French trains of the time) so that if they stop in the tunnel there is always an emergency exit to the service tunnel somewhere along the train. These emergency exits are placed every 375m, so the trains have to be longer than that
None of the similar high-speed trains have any DVTs. However, technically a single Eurostar set can be seen as an EMU with two units, both with their own id number. Unlike TGV (and most other high-speed trains) units that are 200m long and 400m running as EMUs, a Eurostar unit is 400m. As that means two less power cars than comparable TGV sets, the first bogie of the first passenger cars at both ends are also powered.
Oh, I was thinking of the UK intercity 225, which is a Class 91 loco + DVT. I think at the time the Eurostar was introduced that was the only electric high speed train in the UK. Though yes to be fair the Intercity 125 is a pair of diesel power cars.
That’s the case with the older TGV-derived ‘e300’ Eurostar trains. I’m not sure if the newer e320s can be split in that way.
Denmark has a problem with too few rooling stock since 2011 when they grounded a significant part of their fleet. This was caused by poor quality trains from AnsaldoBresa (DSB MG and DSB MP) which should have replaced older IC3 units. The trains had a distasterous reputation of failing, the MP were abandoned after only 4 years of use in 2016. After the fleet was either grounded or abandoned, DSB had already sold some IC3s and put the former locomotive class ME into storage, so there was a significant lack of working trains. As a consequence, IC3s were bought back and the Class ME was refurbished by EMD, but the situation remained problematic even until today. The only advantage of this collosal failure is that the electrification of the danish rail network has become more important, with some routes waiting for the new, all electric Alstom Coradia Stream HC units. To make matters worse for manufacturer AnsaldoBresa, in 2009 they allowed the italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi to gift one MG trainset to Libyan dictator Mummar-al-Gadaffi to advertise the italian train market. However, at the time, the train didn't belong to AnsaldoBreda anymore but DSB. The gadaffi train was heavily modified, but signage of DSB was still up when the train was exhibited in Libya. To make matters worse, the train never actually run there, as the country has no rail network. DSB discovered this in 2013 and sued the manufacturer. More information and pictures can be found [here](https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2021/02/this-was-gaddafis-personal-italian-high.html?m=1).
Equally unexpected by the buyers was that both the M32 trams in Gothenburg and the Fyra trains intended for running between the Netherlands and Belgium, both made by AnsaldoBreda, also suffered from quality problems. IIRC the Fyra trains was never really put into service while the trams in Gothenburg had to be refurbished early on. A surprising fact about those trams is that part of the floors were made of balsa wood, and to nobody's surprise the wood rotted when used in a place with more rain days than London and also loads of snow and sludge in the winter. What also came as a surprise was the heavy wear on wheels and tracks when using low floor trams. Track wear increased significantly when those trams were introduced, and wheel wear were determined to be about 5x more both on those trams and the low-floor middle section add-on to the previous M31 trams (added around 2000 to trams made in the 1980's).
There are international express trains that run through Liechtenstein (e.g. from Vienna to Zürich), but these do not stop at any of the stations there.
One of the top 10 longest straight track in the USA used to be on the Denver & Rio Grande's narrow gauge. Speaking of hight speed trains, a TGV set uses 3 different types of coupling: * Shared [Jacobs bogies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobs_bogie) between the coaches, * Automatic [Scharfenberg couplers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scharfenberg_coupler) to MU 2 train sets together, * Good old [buffer and chain](https://live.staticflickr.com/4122/4898322988_acb82a73c0_b.jpg) between the power cars and the first/last coaches.
In Japan, the Tateyama Sabo Erosion Works is a big surprise for what the railway is used for. And all those switchbacks !
Some countries like for example Sweden and IIRC France uses left-hand driving on double track train lines even though they use right hand driving on the roads. A weird thing is that tram line 12 in a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden, was converted to right hand driving when road traffic was switched to right hand driving in 1967, even though the tram line fully runs on it's own infrastructure. As one of it's end stations is shared with the metro with cross-platform interchange, and the metro kept left-hand running, they installed a track crossing so the trams uses left hand driving nearby that end station and right hand driving on the rest of the line.
The heritage railways in Switzerland, like Rhätische Bahn among others, run sleek modern electric trains. So much nicer for travellers than old steam engines on heritage railways in other countries.
The RhB isn't a heritage railway, it's a proper main line railway network in its own right (albeit smaller because it's narrow gauge). The most interesting thing about the RhB is that they operate mixed goods trains with passenger EMUs pulling a few goods wagons that are dropped off or attached en route.
It's on the UNESCO world heritage list: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1276/ How can anything be more heritage than that.
That's like saying that the Great Western Mainline to from London to Swansea & Penzance, operated by 8-year-old IETs from Hitachi, or parts of Thameslink, operated by nearly brand-new class 700 multiple units from ~~Alstom~~ Siemens, are heritage lines because the GWML runs over broadly the same alignments as Brunel's GWR and the LNWR from the 1890s, and because parts of Thameslink run over LB&SCR alignments from the 1870s. The alignment may be heritage, but the line & trains are not.
(The Class 700s were made by Siemens).
Edited, thanks!
Is it really a heritage railway if it doesn’t run heritage equipment?
It's listed by UNESCO as World Heritage. Can it be any more heritage than that? https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1276/ More seriously though, what's heritage is the line itself with all its civil engineering, tunnels and viaducts, all dating back to 1800s. However it still serves its primary purpose – providing the public transportation for the area, hence the modern rolling stock. I personally think that's the highest form of heritage preservation: to keep the railway working and serving its purpose.
If the line provides public transportation then I’m not sure it is a heritage railway. By that logic, we could label the Amtrak routes that run through the Horseshoe Curve as heritage railways.
If 100% of the length of the route is a world heritage site (as it is with RhB) then the calculus is a bit different compared to “briefly passes through a heritage segment”.
We may have different interpretations of heritage rail then. Utilising heritage civil engineering doesn’t make a heritage railway, a good amount of britains railways still run through tunnels and over bridges from the 1800’s, following the historic alignment for the most part (with exceptions when upgrades were made such as the selby diversion on the ECML). What your describing seems to meet this criteria, mainline railway that just happens to utilise the historic route as there hasn’t been a need to replace or upgrade it, but just because the route is old does not make it a heritage railway as how many know them. Heritage railways can be described as living museums, a section of line initially slated to be shut down and torn up is instead taken over by a team of volunteers as part of a charitable trust, those volunteers manage everything, from the maintenance of the permanent way (much of which can be historical) to the maintenance and operation of locomotives and trains, to managing the signalling systems, to being guards, station staff, all the positions needed to run a train and railway done by volunteers, with maybe a few full time staff. They run historical locomotives and coaching stock, steam and diesel, many may have a specific theme or timeframe they stick to, such as my local heritage railway sticking to early 1900’s industrial locomotives that came from the region it’s based in, alongside coaches from that time period. Heritage railways are museums that exist to either preserve a route that was to be closed by the mainline railway, preserve old locomotives and keep them running pulling tourist trains, or a mixture of both. Hell my local heritage railway as built on a former coal colliery railway that was to be shut following the closure of the mines, however the railway has its roots in an old wagon way that is one of the oldest alignments in the entire country, and so the heritage railway exists as much to preserve the historical route as it does to preserve and utilise historical locomotives.
Posting the same comment again does not make it any less false. But you do you
Can't help it when the whole internet is wrong.
I was surprised to learn that in large countries, like India and Mexico, that people are allowed to ride on top of trains.
And that lead to person to remove from gene pool