Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

1859 OP t1_iyjdigv wrote

Reply to comment by Bcbulbchap in TIL that the southern United States converted all 11,500+ miles of its railroads from broad gauge (5 ft/1.524 m) to nearly-standard gauge (4 ft 9 in/​1.448 m) in just 36 hours, starting on May 31, 1886 by 1859

Their process was pretty neat. They decided that the western-most or northern-most rail was the one to be moved in, and left the other rail as-is. Workers hammered the new spikes ahead of time, three inches inward from the rail to be moved. On the big day, teams used a big caliper called a rail gauge (very creative) that spaced the rails to the exact width of the new gauge. After moving the rail, a few hits with the sledgehammer was all that was needed to put it into place. Then they slid the rail gauge to the next section of track and started the process again.

38

koolaideprived t1_iyjxmgr wrote

Also interesting is that it is ok if they are just a bit over standard gauge, but bad if they are under, so they erred on the too wide side.

12

Bcbulbchap t1_iyjdsdv wrote

Yes, I thought they’d do it like this - very simple.

2