User:Tabletop/Gauge QR
Choice of Gauge in Queensland[edit]
Apart from the Main Range (Bigg's Camp to Toowoomba), Queensland is pretty flat and quite suitable for 1435mm gauge tracks.
My solution to the main range problem would be
- Heavy 53kg rails (30kg elsewhere)
- Heavy locomotives with 20T axle loads (10T elsewhere)
- 1 in 33 gradient (say 1 in 80 elsewhere; steeper than 1 in 50 on actual Main Range)
- 10 chain curves (5 chains elsewhere)
- 10 chain curves more suitable for Fairlie Locomotives?
- Heavy say 2-8-0 locomotives on Main Range (Light 0-6-0 locomotives elsewhere)
- Workshop at one end of heavy Main Range track, so that only delivery trip from Ipswich over light tracks.
- Heavy locomotives otherwise captive to Heavy track on Main Range.
- Possible temporary zig zags, to be replaced by tunnels or deep earthworks later.
- Light rolling stock has no problem operating on heavy track.
- Light and heavy locomotives do of course have to be changed at ends of Main Rain Section.
- Future cane tramways can be 610mm.
- No real problem with 1435mm/610mm dual gauge if required.
This all amounts to a "Break Of Weight" rather than "Break Of Gauge", which is less severe.
Did Abram FitzGibbon think of any of this?
Did the UK Gauge Commission of 1845 consider gauges narrower than 1435mm? No!
If Queensland has to go narrower than 1435mm, then 610mm (like Festiniog Railway) would be even cheaper than 1067mm.
- 610mm would allow even sharper curves, say 2 chains.
- 610mm would perhaps be able to avoid expensive tunnels.
- 610mm would be able to be made longer with lesser gradients, by following contours closer.
- 610mm would need centre buffer couplers instead of English dual buffer couplers
- 610mm can be replaced by 1435mm gauge lines as traffic increases
- 610mm lines in Namibia, Angola, Mozambique, and Republic of Congo were built inistially, only to be replaced by 1067mm gauge line as traffic increases.
- Break of Gauge between 1435mm and 610mm gauge can be overcome by having Piggyback trains, such as between Port Augusta and Leigh Creek in the 1950s.