In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Mike Stevens
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>--- In [email protected], "sean neill" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> > Is there any explabe of railroad cars being carried on canal boats?
>> >
>> Wouldn't be possible on UK narrow canals because of the gauge,
It would be possible, so long as the railway wagons were narrow
gauge - as were many of the mineral railways that connected to
the canals.
But I don't recall ever hearing of it being done - other than a few
cases where the canal was being used to deliver new railway
rolling stock.
>and I
>> can't ever see it being routine because of the tare weight of the
>> vehicles which would have to be craned on, and could travel faster
>on
>> the parallel railway.
But what if the railway was a feeder to the canal, rather than
running parallel to it?
There have been a number of cases where one railway wagon
was carried on another, as a way of making change-of-gauge
easier. There was a Welsh line where narrow gauge wagons
were carried two-by-two on wider (standard?) gauge carrier
trucks. And there are a number of places in mainland Europe
(Zillertalbahn in Austria is one that I have seen) where narrow
gauge branch lines had carrier trucks which carried standard
gauge freight wagons as a way of making through traffic from the
standard gauge main line easier. (which slightly begs the
question of why not build the branch line standard gauge in the
first place, if it was built with large enough bridges to take
standard gauge wagons mounted on carrier trucks? But it was
definitely done, and may still be.)
Why not do something similar with narrow gauge mineral freight
railway wagons loaded onto canal boats? My guess is that
whereas with a rail wagon-on-rail wagon system it is easy to build
a loading bay where lines of different gauges meet end-to-end at
different heights, so that the wagons from one line can be
shunted onto the wagons on the other, it is much more difficult to
do the same with a rail wagon and a boat. It would involve a steep
ramp down into the hold (and a means of dragging the wagons
up it), a crane that could lift a wagon, or flat-decked boats carrying
wagons on deck (which would probably be very unstable when
loaded). (unless anyone can think of a better idea)
Probably much simpler to tranship the cargo, either loose or in
boxes.
All the same, given the ingenious solutions that the canal and
railway systems have come up with over the years (for example
the Tom Pudding railway, various boat-hoists, different kinds of
boat-lifts, rail and canal inclined planes, and the carrier wagons
described above), I'd be very surprised if nobody ever tried a
system involving carrying railway wagons on board canal boats.
>
>I have a vague memory, which I could probably check up on if anybody's
>interested, that while the GWR was at an early stage of its
>construction, its first locomotives were brough by barge of the Grand
>Junction and craned onto the railway at somewhere like Hayes &
>Harlington or West Drayton.
>
I think the first locomotive that ever ran in the USA was built in
Stourbridge and delivered on the first part of its journey by canal.
More recently, rail vehicles for the Channel Tunnel vehicle-carrying
shuttle trains were delivered by canal barge from a factory in (I
think) either Belgium or Holland. Being designed to carry large
road vehicles on a service that shuttles back-and-forth through the
tunnel, they are too large to run on most other railway lines so they
couldn't be delivered by rail. I think they were turned over onto their
side to fit the barges.
--
Martin Ludgate
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