Examples of a wide track (broad gauge):
Normal track (normal path). The normal track is so called because it is used in most countries, in particular in all the countries that were the first to build railways: Germany, USA, France, England... The International Railway Union (UIC) defined this width as the norm according to - comparison with the narrow and wide path. The bulk of all SL (high-speed lines) in the world were created according to this standard.
Classic Lines: Albania, Algeria, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Argentina. Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Colombia (coal line), Korea, Croatia, Denmark, Egypt, USA, France, Gabon, Greece, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Japan (most of all private lines and metro), Lebanon, Liberia, Luxembourg, Libya (under construction), Malaysia (airport line), Macedonia, Morocco, Mauritania, Mexico, Montenegro, Nigeria (trade line), Norway, Panama (with 2000), Paraguay, Holland, Peru, Poland, Romania, England, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Syria, Czech Republic, Tunisia, Turkey, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam...
Express Lines: France, Germany, England, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Spain, Korea, China, Japan (Shinkansen), Taiwan. South Africa (in draft for Gotren) 1372: Japan, Keio Line system, Toei Shinjuku subway and tram lines in Tokyo et Hakodate.
Metric path examples:
Good day! Dear readers, what do you know about the railway? Do you know all the details? Perhaps many nuances were missed in your “lost and found”? I invite everyone to plunge into a long voyage together to study, supplement and develop your knowledge in order to catch up, learn a lot of new, exciting and interesting things about the railway world. So to speak from A to Z.
Each of us was on the train platform, found ourselves in the same compartment with a noisy group that sang songs all night, laughed and kept us awake until dawn. I was influenced by these very feelings of the trip - lightness, freedom and mystery. I made friends who, like you, were on the same path. I wondered where these railway cars were going and from, how the driver felt when he arrived at the station, or, on the contrary, he had just started moving...
The railway track in Russia is an integral part of the entire railway world; not only the timeliness and safety of the trip, but also the correct operation of the train itself depends on it. A track consists of two parallel rail threads that are located at a certain distance from each other. This is the width of the path - the distance between two parallel threads. In simple words This is the very distance between the tracks.
The railway line in Russia and Europe is completely different (the European railway line is 1435 millimeters wide, while in Russia it is 1520 millimeters), this is accompanied by a lot of different reasons - strategic and historical. Today, only 60% of European roads have a European gauge. As such, there are no advantages of a width of 1520 units over a width of 1435 units, because the difference is not so great, some 85 millimeters, or 8 half centimeters, the only difference is stability, since in a width of 1520 millimeters, stability is more reliable. Tolerances allowed +6 -4 mm.
The size of the wheelsets is related to the width of the track, because they must match and suit each other. I wonder why track width is so important in the operation of a railway machine? The wider the gauge, the more weight a freight or passenger train can carry. No matter how strange it may sound, even a minimal difference in the change in the width of the line can affect passenger and freight traffic, because the smaller the width, the less mass the train will carry with it.
At the moment, the width of the railway line in Russia is 1520 millimeters, and is the second longest in the world along the laid tracks; by the way, it has remained virtually unchanged for several centuries. Not only in Russia the gauge has such a length, also in the countries of the former USSR, Finland and Mongolia.
A width of 1524 units or 1520, as for me, then of course the difference of some 4 mm is practically unnoticeable and does not have terrifying consequences. No re-equipment of the composition or changes in minor nuances are required. But, during the transition phase, serious problems with wear of the wheel sets were caused. Wheel sets are one of the foundations of the railway chassis. The width of 1524 units became relevant during the construction of the Nikolaev railway, during the 19th century, but was changed to a width of 1520 mm in the 70s of the 20th century.
It is known that gauge is used not only on the railway, but also in subways and in most tram systems. All this, for a second, amounts to 11% of the railways. As far as is known, this value of track width is not only standard, but also the most optimal: increasing the stability of tracks when using trains and locomotives, also reducing wear on rails and wheel pairs, increasing the speed of the railway beast. In my opinion, these are pretty good factors.
Exists interesting fact that the track width of 1524 units was created because it was easy to remember and expressed in a round number, 1524 mm - 5 feet. According to historical data, these same 5 feet played a rather important role during the Second World War, because the standards of Russian lines differed from the standards and internal differences of European railway gauges. That is, it would be difficult for the enemy to transport his troops and military cargo, since he would have to change his own width of the tracks.
There is another type of railway track. Narrow gauge railway, or narrow railway. It is notable for its width, only 600 – 1200 mm. There are tracks with even smaller widths, for example, the Dekalievskaya track, which is 500 millimeters wide!
A huge advantage of narrow gauge railways is that they are not as expensive to create and are not as difficult to use as standard gauge railways. If standard gauges are only suitable for freight and passenger transportation, then narrow-gauge ones are intended for the operation and maintenance of mines, logging sites, peat mining, and mines.
And of course, how can we not touch on the topic of children's railways. It is not only fun and exciting, it is very entertaining and educational not only for your baby, but also for parents. Just imagine what kind of work the workers of the children's railway do to satisfy our desires and whims, so that when leaving this place we would look back at those memories and promise ourselves to come back here again! The track width of the children's road is 750 millimeters, and yes, it belongs to the narrow-gauge category.
Not many people know that the very first road in Russia was Tsarskoselskaya, which had the largest line width - 1829 units.
Today, the railway is an integral part in the case of travel, a business trip or a simple move from one place to another.
For example, let’s make a simple comparison, imagine a car without one, the fourth wheel, will it move? I’ll be Captain Obvious, she won’t even stand still and will simply collapse to the ground without standing for even a second. Likewise, a railway, without one thing, be it wheelsets, or some kind of internal mechanisms, in the end, it will not be able to exist, but will simply occupy a certain territory, fall in dust, and catch glances of pity and contempt from people passing by.
I hope that my article was not only interesting, but also to some extent informative and fascinating; perhaps you learned a lot of new things for yourself, perhaps made some definite conclusions, discoveries, and gained new knowledge in the field of railway life from the inside. I think that your friends or colleagues, or maybe one of your relatives, are also interested in the existence of the railway?! Therefore, it would be nice if you shared the article on social networks, let everyone know and learn.
Of course, subscribe and subscribe your friends to update the blog.
“When so much is behind you, especially grief, don’t wait for anyone’s support, get on the train, land by the sea...” - Joseph Brodsky
Map of railway gauges around the world
Track width- distance between the inner edges of the rail heads.
The nominal size of the track width between the inner edges of the rail heads on straight sections of the railway track and on curves with a radius of 350 m or more is 1,520 mm. The track width on steeper curves should be:
Track widths less than 1,512 mm and more than 1,548 mm are not allowed. The presence and running of railway rolling stock intended for use on public railway tracks on railway tracks that do not comply with the specified standards is not permitted.
On non-public railway tracks it is allowed to preserve until reconstruction:
The track width between the inner edges of the rail heads on straight sections of the track should be 1,520 mm.
On all curved sections of the track, the track width should be at a radius:
On existing lines, on straight and curved sections of track, the track width is allowed according to previously established standards. Maintenance standards for such sections of track are established by
A railway track consists of two parallel rail threads laid on a base that includes blocks, beams and sleepers. The latest products are made from various woods, but preference is given to pine. Recently, reinforced concrete has been increasingly used for these purposes. All of the listed components are attached taking into account a certain distance from each other. The rail track directly guides the wheels of the rolling stock when moving along curved and straight sections of the road. The rail slope and the width of the track itself are considered the main parameters of the entire track as a whole. The inclination of the inner part of the track in relation to the upper plane, consisting of sleepers, in terminology is called the inclination of the rails. As with all engineering structures, rail tracks have special tolerances that cannot be exceeded; for these purposes, periodic inspections railway. The established regulations for carrying out inspection work are intended to regulate the frequency of their execution.
The railway gauge in Russia had different parameters of this indicator at different times and on different tracks. So the first Russian railway, connecting the Tsarskoye Selo station in St. Petersburg, Tsarskoye Selo and Pavlovskoye, was put into operation in 1837. It was called the Tsarskoye Selo Road. Width rail gauge at that time was equal to the value - 1829 mm. But already in 1851 Russia solemnly opened the St. Petersburg-Moscow railway. After the death of Emperor Nicholas I in 1855, the branch of the route became Nikolaevskaya. As a rule, after the revolution in Russia they begin to rename everything and everyone. The Nikolaevskaya road did not escape this fate, since 1923; in all documents it already passes as Oktyabrskaya. Communication on it was carried out between Moscow and St. Petersburg, the rail gauge parameter is 1524 mm, differing from a significant part of European countries, about 60% of the total number of states, by 89 mm. But, despite all these described differences, this size of railway gauge for many years in Russian Empire and in the USSR it becomes the notorious standard.
The length of the Nikolaevskaya road was six hundred and four versts or 645 kilometers. As a comparison, the astronomical calculation of this route between Moscow and St. Petersburg is equal to 598 versts, while the length of the highway between these cities was 674 versts. All this clearly demonstrates the defense of the pure legends associated with the construction of the road.
One of the popular tales was that Nicholas the First gave all orders concerning the construction of the future Nikolaev railway himself. Witnesses confirm that the emperor outlined the line of communication along a ruler. True, there was an incident; allegedly the autocrat, while drawing the line of the road, outlined on the map, in the Bologoe region, one of the fingers of his hand. The sovereign's instructions are not discussed, but implemented. Although, in fact, this bend has its own explanation. In the area of the Mstinsky Bridge, a path should have been laid in a straight line, but the power of the steam locomotives of that time would obviously not have been enough, since the difference in the natural profile would not have allowed this to be done; in addition, another steam engine would have to be attached. Therefore, it was necessary to build a track with a bend, the so-called Verebyinsky bypass, while also creating a new Oksochi station. Today, times are different and the power of locomotives is different, and the curve of the railway with a large radius makes it possible to ensure high-speed movement of trains on the specified section. Even curves with smaller radii will be reconstructed today. The serpentine of the Verebyinsky bypass has long been gone, and the Oksmochi station is no longer needed; the Oktyabrskaya Railway has become truly straight, as the Russian autocrat wanted. The road was originally created with two lines of tracks.
As for the width of the rail track, engineers turned to this standard because of savings, taking into account the experience of building the Tsarskoye Selo road, as well as the construction experience of American engineers in creating railway tracks. The wider the track, the more money will be required. In fact, there were a lot of disputes about the width of the rail track at the beginning of the design. The American engineer Whistler insisted on this at one time. The European gauge with a size of 1435 mm was rejected by Russian specialists due to the lack of the required level of stability, and most importantly, the inability to develop high speed, and what Russian person does not like to ride with the breeze. There were also defensive considerations in this regard. Then it was believed that the advancing enemy would not be able to use the Russian railway due to the difference in its width. This was largely confirmed during the conduct of hostilities by enemy troops on the territory of our state during the first two world wars. Fans of legends testify that the debate about the width of the rail track was put to an end by Nicholas the First, answering the engineers’ question about the possibility of choosing the width of the road relative to the European or American parameter. The emperor’s decision was quick, brief and laconic: “You don’t need a wider American cart - it’s expensive, you shouldn’t go smaller than the European standard, count on the size of a Russian cart.” This is what was created, in the guise of the Russian standard, equal to 1524 mm. Despite the fact that this is just a legend, it was born from real events. The Russian standard gauge is used in Mongolia and to this day in Finland. Since May 1970, the Russian railway has used a rail gauge with a width of 1520 mm. Since the difference with the previous standard is insignificant, only four millimeters, the rolling stock has not been converted. However, already at that time, the transition period that had begun showed that our railways were faced with serious problems, since a sharp increase in wear on rolling stock and wheel sets began. Until today, scientists have not determined the exact relationship between the wheel flange of a wheelset and the rail width of the railway.
A railway with a narrow gauge may have the following parameters, for example, the Decaville gauge was created in France, its width is equal to 500 mm, it was originally built in rural areas. The project was created by the French engineer Paul Decaville. Since he came from rural areas, then he put his hands to facilitate peasant labor. The basis of such a road was made up of rail and sleeper grids with metal elements. The beet harvest was transported manually in trolleys along such tracks. Subsequently, the system was modernized and was widely used on the battlefield; shells were delivered directly to the guns in the interior of defensive structures. The European mining industry also used a similar track, transporting mined ore. The traction power of such roads began its modernization with horse-drawn traction. In the Russian Empire, the possibility of using the Decaville gauge was tested by the railway engineer M. S. Volkov.
The capabilities of narrow-gauge roads with a width of 600 mm or 1200 mm have found their application in civilian or military facilities. Russian narrow-gauge railways had a track width of 750 mm. All the Baltic republics also used a similar gauge at their enterprises and structures. Estonia began using this type of track in 1896; the first track connected the cities of Valga and Pärnu. At the beginning of the twentieth century, a narrow gauge line also appeared in the port of Tallinn. Subsequently, communications were established with regions of Ukraine and the USSR. In Estonia, to this day there is a depot that served trains operating on narrow gauge roads. Today this enterprise services diesel trains and conventional locomotives.
Tram tracks in different Russian cities also have different widths. Thus, in Rostov-on-Don, the width of tram tracks is equal to the size of the standard European railway tracks - 1435 mm. Cities such as Pyatigorsk or Kaliningrad use tram tracks with a width of 1067 mm. The same width of tracks in Tallinn, Estonia. In the German city of Leipzig, the tram track width is 1458 mm, and in Dresden - 1458 mm. Today, the Pyatigorsk and Kaliningrad systems have been preserved on Russian territory.
The Russian metro uses the same track gauge as the railway in our country.
In 1830, the Manchester-Liverpool railway opened; one of the authors of the project was the English engineer George Stephenson. The width of the rail track was 1435 mm, which in English measures was four feet and eight and a half inches. After sixteen years, the specified gauge becomes the European standard. The same gauge was installed on railways in the USA, in 60% of European countries and in China.
In the thirties of the nineteenth century, the construction of the Great Western Road was completed. The width of its rail track was equal to 2135 mm. The English engineer Isambart Brunel, who lived at that turbulent time, made proposals for the construction of a super-broad gauge railway. But his plans were not destined to come true. In 1945, disagreements regarding the size of rail gauges were put to an end by the English legislature.
According to the decision of the English Parliament, justified by the results of the work of a special parliamentary commission, the standard size for the width of rail tracks in the UK becomes an indicator equal to the value of 1435 mm, and from then on should be installed on all railway tracks under construction. Roads that did not meet the accepted standard were subject to reconstruction. It is also interesting that violators of that adopted law were fined ten pounds sterling for each day of existence, for each land mile of a non-standard road discovered.
The story of the creation of a super-wide rail does not end there. In the 30s. In the 20th century, specialists of the Third Reich made an attempt to develop a super-wide-gauge high-speed railway, called “Breitspurbahn”, its gauge was 3000 mm. The construction of this road network was planned on the European and subsequently on the Asian continent. The idea of the project's authors was to connect the territories of India and Japan with all of Europe. For a visual demonstration, a small section of the road was built. Engineers worked to create a fundamentally new type of carriages, diesel locomotives and steam locomotives. The project failed.
In 2001, the Cairngorm Mountain Railway was created in the form of a mountain funicular railway to lift mountain skiers; its width is 2000 mm. In the Netherlands, such a road had a gauge of 1945 mm. In England, the maximum width reached 1880 mm. The maximum gauge of the first Russian Tsarskoye Selo railway was 1829 mm; in France this figure reached 1750 mm.
Our society has developed a somewhat utilitarian idea that rail transport as such appeared in the middle of the 18th century with the invention of steam wheeled vehicles. At the same time, such names of brilliant designers as Ivan Ivanovich Polzunov, James Watt and Richard Trevithick remained in history. However, moving large loads on rails has more ancient history and traditions. No less ancient than such a concept as a railway track.
In order to perceive a little more correctly the need for the emergence of rail transport and such a parameter as the railway gauge, it is worth recalling a little the physics course from the same primary school. From it we can remember somewhere that the pressure on a particular surface is distributed in direct proportion to the area on which we act. In this case, an example is quite acceptable when, with the force of our hand, we cannot make a hole in the same fabric or wood, but armed with a needle, with the same force of influence, we do this without much difficulty. In a slightly different example, walking in the snow, we easily fall under the freshly fallen crust. But if we put skis or other devices on our feet, then this problem will be solved.
Rail - the word comes from the plural of the English word "rails" - from the Latin "regula", which means a straight stick. This technical solution was invented by the ancient Romans, and the initial width between the rails was 143.5 cm, which is slightly less modern meaning such a parameter as the railway gauge for heavy-duty rail transport.
A similar problem arose among our ancestors when transporting large heavy loads. The loads simply got stuck in the same soil or sand. Taking into account precisely this feature and circumstances, our ancestors began to place the cargo itself on some kind of substrate, which distributed the total load over a larger area than the area of the cargo itself, and made the possibility of moving the cargo more acceptable.
This is exactly what the ancient Greeks did when they needed to transport their sea ships across the Isthmus of Corinth. By laying out the entire route from stone slabs greased, the Greeks moved their ships in the desired direction at the lowest cost. And here, perhaps for the first time, it is worth mentioning such a concept as a railway track, although it would be more correct to call it a stone road track, but the essence of the concept and parameter does not change. In this case, it was a trench hollowed out in stone slabs along which the ships themselves moved. True, unlike modern analogues, they did not use steam locomotives or teams of heavy-duty horses as the driving force; the ships were pulled by slaves, and if you believe the ancient Greek historians, they did it quite well.
The railway track is a strictly established distance between the inner sides of the laid rail, and is unchanged along the entire length of the given path.
The centuries-old experience of the ancient Greeks and Romans in moving large loads using rails did not fall into oblivion and was successfully implemented in the mining industry of Germany and England in the 16th – 18th centuries. So, in particular, in the mines of German Thuringia, to transport the mined ore, entrepreneurs began to use wooden rails along which trolleys moved. A special feature of this project was the fact that, unlike other similar developments, the design of the trolley wheels had so-called flanges.
Flange - from the French word “reborde” - “ridge”, a slightly protruding part of the wheel or pulley structure, designed to keep the wheel or cable moving in a given direction. The distance between the outer edges of the flange on railway wheelsets corresponds to such a parameter as the railway gauge.
At the same time, entrepreneurs of enterprises located on the surface did not lag behind their colleagues engaged in the mining business. And already in 1603, the first overland “Wallaton Carriage Road” appeared to transport mined coal to consumers near Nottigham. It also used wooden rails, whose railway gauge was similar to that used in the mines, and its length at that time was simply colossal, as much as three and a half kilometers. The “Wallaton Carriage Road” also existed for quite a long time until the closure of the mine itself in 1620.
Domestic inventors and businessmen did not lag behind their European colleagues. So in 1755 in Altai mining enterprise one of the first narrow-gauge rail roads in Russia was built. The railway gauge was much smaller than was customary in Europe, and had only 650 millimeters between the internal distances of the wooden rails. In this case, such a railway gauge was determined by the width of both the mine opening itself and the use of a slightly different method of transporting cargo.
So, in particular, if in European mine workings either the miners themselves or horses were used to transport trolleys, then in the Altai mines the trolleys were moved using a cable stretched along the entire route. At the same time, the cable itself was made in the form of a closed ring attached to two pulleys, the rotation of which led to the movement of the entire cable along the entire route. The trolleys themselves could be hooked with special hooks onto rings located on the cable at a certain pitch. The pulleys, like the cable itself, were driven by a pair or three horses. This solution clearly made it possible to use not only a smaller value for such a parameter as the railway gauge, but also the ability to brake the trolley and change the direction of its movement with continuous movement of the cable.
The domestic history of railway transport can be found in.
An equally remarkable moment in the history of domestic railways is the construction in 1788 in Pertrozavodsk, on the Olonetsky mining factories Charles Gascoigne's first railway in Tsarist Russia. Unlike many rail roads that existed in Russia at that time, this rail road was made entirely of cast iron, which is why it was popularly nicknamed the “Cast Iron Wheel Pipeline.” The railway gauge, following the example of European rolling stock manufacturers, was set within 800 millimeters. In this case, this was quite enough for the stable transportation of ore and castings from the steelmaking shop to the drilling shop, where the gun barrel castings were additionally processed. At the same time, workers were used as draft power along the entire length of this road.
This narrow-gauge railway existed in one form or another until 1956, when the Onega steel plant was converted into a tractor plant. And individual fragments of this road were dismantled and exhibited in the Karelian Museum of Local Lore.
Although, according to many historians, the palm in the invention and construction of the first steam locomotive belongs to the Englishman Richard Trevithick, his project of 1804, unfortunately, did not receive proper distribution. And the main problem was not in the design of the steam locomotive itself, but in the design and material from which the rails were made. And if such a parameter of the railway track as the railway gauge could be determined more or less objectively at 1435 millimeters, which ensured quite reliable stability of the movement of the train, however, a problem arose with the quality of the rails. Since at that time cast iron was used as the main material for their manufacture, such cast iron rails did not always withstand the loads that were developed by both the steam locomotive itself and the loaded cars it moved.
Taking this into account, the most successful model of a steam locomotive appeared only in 1812 with the light hand of the Englishman George Stephenson. His steam locomotive "Rocket" was such a successful design that it won a special competition on the Manchester - Liverpool section, which was the impetus for many mine owners to allocate funds for the construction of the Darlington - Stocktoun railway. At the same time, rails began to be made of steel, and the railway gauge became almost a standard and amounted to 1435 millimeters.
An equally interesting point is the fact that it was from this period that wooden sleepers under the rails began to be laid not along the location of the rails, but in a transverse position, more familiar to us. At the same time, this design of fastening the rails gave a more rigid position of one rail relative to the other, thereby the railway gauge along the entire length of the route had a smaller spread of this parameter.
If the first rails made of wood had one significant drawback - wear resistance, then to eliminate or minimize it, some designers began to cover the surface of the wooden rail with strips of metal. But a more promising proposal was the use of corners made of iron instead of metal strips. In this case, the vertical guide of the iron angle acts as a guide during the movement of both the steam locomotive and the trolleys themselves. At the same time, for the first time in the practice of rail transport, the wheels rolled along the outside of the vertical flange of the angle, and the distance between these rail elements is nothing more than the railway track.
Around 1790, the English inventor George Outram proposed making rails in the form of cast iron plates with double guides. Where the railway gauge, based on the design of the rail itself, was unchanged and amounted to the already familiar value of 1435 millimeters, which in turn determined the invariability of such a parameter as the railway gauge throughout the entire length of the laid track. Such rails were quite easily mounted into a solid overpass and, if necessary, could be dismantled and moved to another location as needed with minimal labor costs. An equally remarkable aspect of this design was the fact that the possibility of manufacturing such slabs by casting also solved the problem of their interchangeability and standardization of this design. In this regard, this type of rail has become quite widespread both in coal mines and open pit mines, and in industrial enterprises as vehicle movement of raw materials and supplies inside production premises.
However, a more revolutionary invention of this period was the work of the English mechanical engineer Stephen Jesson, who worked at the Lowburrow coal mines. Having a little understanding of theoretical mechanics and such a scientific and technical discipline as the strength of materials, Jesson proposed an almost modern design of a rail, a cap type, where the railway track was also determined by the distance between the inner sides of the rail head.
At the same time, this design ensured not only acceptable manufacturability and installation of this type of rail, but also provided quite significant savings in the metal itself. So, in particular, in Jesson’s design, the guide flange was not located along the entire length of the rail, but only on the wheelset of a steam locomotive or a freight-passenger car. At the same time, the shape of the rail itself, instead of a purely rectangular shape, has an “I-beam” shape, which significantly reduces not only the weight of the rail itself, but also reduces the metal consumption for its manufacture. But regardless of this, the railway gauge remained unchanged at 1435 millimeters, since with the help of special clamps, the so-called “wood grouse,” both rails were quite rigidly attached to a set of laid sleepers.
According to many historians, it was the development and widespread use of Jesson's rail design that gave a significant impetus to the development of metallurgy. After all, its specialists were tasked not only with increasing steel production volumes, but also obtaining the appropriate profile. Taking this into account, by the middle of the 18th century, steel began to be produced using the most progressive methods, such as Bessemer, open-hearth and converter. And the production of steel rails itself was mastered at rolling mills. Which in turn gave more stable values of both the geometry of the rail itself and such a parameter as the railway gauge. At the same time, the first rolling mill, for large-scale industrial production the rail was designed back in 1828 by the English engineer Neil Berkinshaw. With the first design of this rolling mill, it was possible to produce steel rails 4.5 meters long. However, after its corresponding modernization, this indicator is by rolling mill was increased to 7.25 meters, which provided a significant reduction in labor costs when installing a rail track or when carrying out repair work. And here we should not forget that with a longer base of a unit of rail bed, such an indicator as the railway gauge also has more stable indicators of the permissible limit of deviations.
Another problem that metallurgists needed to solve in the production of rail products was their strength and wear resistance. The first rails made of carbon steel had rather low indicators of these parameters, which, among other things, significantly influenced such an indicator as the railway gauge.
So, over time, to eliminate these shortcomings, metallurgists developed special alloyed alloys for the production of both the rails themselves and the main elements of rolling stock. The latter primarily include rolling stock wheelsets, which significantly influence such a parameter as the railway gauge.
Taking this into account, the metal from which these products are made contains in a certain percentage such alloying metals as manganese, vanadium, titanium and zirconium. At the same time, from a technological point of view, heat treatment of finished products also plays an important role in obtaining the required metal parameters. So, in particular, according to the developed technologies, the depth heat treatment should be at least 8 - 10 millimeters from the surface of the product, and microcracks, voids and foreign inclusions are not allowed in the macrostructure of the metal itself. Although these indicators chemical composition And physical properties metal do not significantly affect such an indicator as the railway gauge, but they largely determine the quality and reliability of the main elements of the rolling stock.
According to many railway experts, it remains a certain mystery why exactly 4"81/2" or 1435 millimeters was chosen as the standard for such a parameter as the railway gauge. There are many versions of the appearance of this size, but almost all of them do not have strictly scientific and documentary confirmation.
At the same time, many of these experts believe that increasing such a parameter as the railway gauge to 51/2" or even 6" would have at least some economic justification. After all, a wider railway gauge would have made it possible to place the mechanisms of a steam locomotive more rationally; in particular, with the same length, it would have been possible to significantly increase the volume of the steam boiler. Not to mention the greater stability of the rolling stock and the real possibility of increasing the speed of movement, in the same freight or passenger carriages, perhaps there would be more cargo. Here it is enough to recall the rather ambitious project of the early 30s developed in Germany “Breitspurbahn”, where the railway gauge was not much, but 3000 millimeters. And these were not only the fantasies of German designers to create a transcontinental railway starting in the capital of the Third Reich and crossing all of Europe and Asia with the goal of connecting Berlin with Japan and India.
So this question is not completely idle and carries with it significant both technical and economic problems.
Somewhere, the designers of high-speed passenger trains encountered similar problems in determining such a parameter as the railway gauge. Indeed, with the same dimensions of the rolling stock, it was necessary to solve many technical problems in order to be able to move such trains at a speed of much more than 320 km/h.
An equally interesting problem in the development of the domestic railway is the issue of connecting the European railway track with the track located on Russian territory. After all, the European track has standard size 1435 millimeters, while the Russian railway gauge has a size of 1520 millimeters.
In order to ensure the unhindered movement of cargo and passenger flows to countries such as Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, so-called “docking” nodes were equipped in the border area, where carriage bogies of one standard are switched to another. On average, this operation takes up to two to two and a half hours. At the same time, powerful jacks are used at the “docking” points, lifting passenger and freight cars to the required height. In this case, wheelsets are installed on the rolling stock, on which the railway track corresponds to the required size.
In many European countries, China and the USA, the size of the railway gauge is 4 feet and 8.5 inches, that is, 1435 mm. This width was adopted by engineer George Stephenson to build the first passenger railway line from Liverpool to Manchester. At that time, this width of tracks was the narrowest of all existing ones.
It was no coincidence that Stephenson settled on a width of 1435 mm - it corresponded to the distance between the wheels of Roman chariots, and subsequently stagecoaches. Well, the first English steam locomotive, as you know, was built exactly according to the width of the stagecoach.
A little later, according to the design of engineer Brinell, a railway with a width of 2135 mm was built. It was believed that distance would create conditions for increasing the speed of the locomotive. Throughout Europe, a real leapfrog began, associated with tracks of different widths, and steam locomotives began to run irregularly. As a result, in 1846, the British Parliament issued a decree obliging all railway owners to change the gauges to Stephenson's size.
In Russia, the railway gauge is wider than the Stephenson gauge by exactly 85 cm and is 1520 mm. True, they did not settle on this size right away. The very first St. Petersburg - Tsarskoe Selo, which opened in 1837, generally had a gauge of 1829 mm wide.
In 1843, engineer Melnikov designed the St. Petersburg - Moscow railway and laid out a 1524 mm wide gauge for it. In his opinion, this size was much more optimal for the speed and stability of the rolling stock than Stephenson's. In addition, it provided a more convenient placement of the locomotive mechanism and an increase in the volume of the boiler and the weight of the cargo. A railway gauge of this size was subsequently distributed not only throughout Russia, but also in Finland and Mongolia.
There is also a version that the different railway gauge sizes from European ones were associated with making it difficult for the enemy to send troops into Russia in the event of an attack on the country.
During the Soviet years, the gauge was reduced by 4 mm, and all railways were transferred to a 1520 mm gauge, which remains to this day, including in the countries of the former CIS. This was due to the goal of increasing the speed of trains without modernizing them, as well as to increase stability in the operation of freight trains. In Finland, the gauge remained the same - 1524 mm, and in Russia, some metro lines and trams still have a gauge of this width.
