Search results

If you look at the map of the railroad lines between Orange and Charlottesville, it looks like all were originally intended to go somewhere other than the direction of their current main traffic flows. The original Southern Railroad main north of Orange VA was the Alexandria and Orange, which...

Possible answer in what is said here: There is such a thing as a plate gauge, similar to the concept of a rail gauge which is used to check the distance between inside faces of the rail head. One form of plate gauge is set to check the distance between inside rail seats of the tie plates...

Never did understand that one. Given the end to end time could have been similar to that of the City of New Orleans (then 16 1/2 hours), which train could at times into the early 1960's get up to 20 cars, I would think both railroads would have put on a fast day train. The population of major...

Oh, wow!!! Awesome.

Go back to my original negative: Higher rolling resistance. This means greater energy consumption and greater heat production for the same weight and capacity vehicle. A rubber tired vehicle with the same capacity will NOT be lighter than an equivalent steel wheel vehicle. Also, pollution...

Got it. Still far more complex than a standard railroad turnout.

That steel rail disadvantage fairly well disappeared with use of welded rail. All rubber tire systems have higher energy consumption, and hence greater heat generation than steel wheel on rail systems due to greater rolling resistance.

Got "error occurred"

Can't make a mental picture of what you are describing. Regardless, still more complex than a standard railroad turnout.

Read these things as works of fiction.

I can think of near nothing to say positive about this monorail or monorails in general. It is actually a very old concept, going back to the late 1800's, with one of the first being a suspended monorail in Germany. For the most part they are science fictioney fantasyland things which does make...

Random note on words: When a river vessel strikes a bridge pier or other fixed object, the correct term is that it "allides" with it, NOT "collides". Thus, what you had here was an "allision", not a collision.

Ah yes. We did likewise, but 50 years ago, starting in Hattiesburg MS and went to DC where we were both working at that time. February 14, 1973. Southern Railway in a bedroom in one of their lovely 10-6's. Operated, near on time all the way. Beautiful moonlit night through the Carolinas.

And that with a train that ran three days a week! Shifted the bridge enough to derail the train, but not so much as to break the rail and thus drop the signal. A friend of one of my in-laws was on that train, bound for Pensacola. Amongst the fatalities.

We didn't need to give Weese any ideas. The cost of doing this to the arches would have been astronomical. The tiling on the platforms was ridiculously expensive as it was. Most were done over in part or in total during construction. Generally the finish contractors lost a bundle on these...

Yes and Amen!!! Skipping many things I would like to say about some of the WMATA versus almost everything events while I was there, I will say it is an absolute miracle that the system as built is very close to the system as envisioned in the late 1960's in its entirety plus some of the dotted...

This is incorrect. The original through trusses have been replaced with through plate girders, but the track is still open deck, that is rails on wood ties attached to the steel bridge members. No ballast. Just looked at Google Maps to be certain that there had been no change in the bridge...

Try this to get the information from the horse's mouth and avoid paywalls altogether. https://vapassengerrailauthority.org/longbridgeproject/#:~:text=The%20planned%20Long%20Bridge%20Project,VA%2C%20and%20Washington%2C%20DC. Embedded with the above is a link to the ROD (Record of Decision) with...

I did tend to forget about the Fine Arts Commission as everything we had to do with them was filtered through Harry Weese. Practicality is not part of their understanding of anything. That the DC streetcar system operated with a "plow" in a slot between the rails to contact a power rail being...

I am not going to go back and quote some of the previous comments, although some will be addressed here. Consider this a start of several. I spent a little over 6 years on this system in its beginning, 1 1/2 years with a contractor and 4 1/2 years with DeLeuw Cather (the General Engineering...