Narrow gauge railway

The railroads to narrow gauge railway are railways whose spacing of the rails is lower than 1,435 meter (4 feet 8 inches and half), which is the standard of the way known as normal.

There exist narrow gauge railways of very diverse spacings. The most used are the Cape Gauge (1067mm - 3 feet 6 inches), the metric gauge track (1000 mm), the way of 760 mm and that of 600 Misters One usually meets the metric spacing, which was the district standard of the distributers of Western Europe and of which some lines, are still in exploitation. Let us quote for example the line of the White-Money or that of the Railroads of Provence in France, network HSB in the mountains of Harz in Germany or many lines of mountain into Swiss. The Gauge Cape is very present in the old English colonies and in Japan. This spacing constitutes the majority of the Japanese rail network with almost 18000 km.

The ways of 750 and 760 mm are used for the same kind of line, but are rather used in Germany and Austria (750mm) or in Balkans (760mm).

The spacing of 600mm is very much used in the industrial contexts, in Europe and Australia. It was also used for district distributers. The mark Decauville is emblematic of this spacing, having invented a system of way portable and developped at the point of the types of engines adapted very well to the context of use. Very many other industrialists produced material for this spacing.

The principal interest of the narrow gauge railway is to allow restricted radii of curvature and fact, to better adapt to the ground. That makes it more economic to build and exploit that the normal way: there needs less works of Article adapting better to the tormented reliefs, it generally was essential in the areas of Montagne. However, the normal way authorizes the circulation of Train S heavier at more important speeds. Thus with the Japan, the normal spacing was selected for the lines at high speed in spite of the fact that the traditional network is almost entirely with narrow gauge railway of 1067 Misters.

In the history of the techniques, many narrow gauge railways were built for the army (Système Péchot, coaches Pershing) and the Industrie, in the mines, the sawmills, construction, agriculture to answer problems of handling. Indeed, at one time not so remote it was frequent to find a network with portable narrow gauge railway on the building sites. In certain industries (Glassmaking, briquettery, etc) where the transport of materials is carried out uninterrupted, narrow gauge railways are always used and constitute a perfectly viable solution on the economic plan. Some large companies of civil engineering also benefitted from the marketing of a great quantity of equipment during closing of the last French mines of coal to re-equip themselves in material with narrow gauge railway.

Railroads to narrow gauge railway are used during the construction of Tunnel S, especially when those have lengths of some hundred or thousands meters. A network with way of 60cm was also installed during the restoration of the Louvre.

See too

Spacing of the rails | broad Way | List of the lines with metric gauge tracks in France

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