Steam locomotives still in use

I don't have the document to hand, but the DSVN has what I believe is the largest loading of the Asian metre gauge railways. From memory it allows a max. height of 4 metres and a max. width of 3.1 metres.

As an aside, some passenger rollingstock built at great expense recently for use on the Great South Pacific Express here in Australia became notorious for its poor ride quality. The cars were built on the underframes of former 3'6"/1067mm gauge QR brakevans, and were equipped for bogie exchange to run on standard gauge.

Rather unexpectedly, the cars rode better on the narrow gauge than standard, although in both cases the ride quality was regarded as unacceptable for the standard of accomodation being offered.

Cheers,

Mark.

____ david parsons \bi/ Boo hiss Terra Transport! \/

East Broad Top in Pennsylvania did it regularly with standard gauge cars put onto 3' narrow gauge trucks. They had a purpose built gantry crane to lift the cars for the truck swap.

Dan Mitchell ==========

david pars>

They did do the truck swap. But the transfer gantry was NOT built for this job. It was built for timber transfer from narrow gauge to standard gauge cars. I was availible and used for the truck swap.

I stand corrected.

Dan Mitchell ==========

Howard R Garner wrote:

Go, Jawn Henry!

Did have a shower room or a bunk room? How was the coffee? Gene ABV61-1043.001.HCB

Transporter cars are used on the Swiss narrow gage lines to haul standard gage freight cars. I've seen the cars in use but I was never able to observe how they were loaded or unloaded.

Glenn

The Leek and Manifold had the narrow gauge tracks lower than the standard gauge. The narrow gauge wagons were pushed against a raised stone platform that had standard gauge track on it, so that rails on the wagon lined up with the track, and the standard gauge wagons were pushed onto the narrow gauge transporters.

British steam era open wagons were small by modern standards, less than 20 feet over the buffers, and not very high. So there wasn't any clearance problem.

Newfoundland

Bemo make the "rollbocks". These were used on a number of Metre and 750mm gauge lines in Southern Germany.

Regards, Greg.P.

Driving through the Tyrol, on the way to the Tauern tunnel, I saw what looked like a transfer station between two narrow gauge lines - roughly meter gauge and whatever the metric equivalent of 2 foot gauge is. Looked like they were using transfer cars.

It would not be that hard to make HO-scale "Rollbacks" for use on a model pike. Use N-scale trackage, and N-scale trucks. Add a carry system for the HO-scale axles, connect the "N"s by a stiff rod. Viola: "Rollbacks." The idea is similar to the Pusher Mule used at some coal unloading docks, where a cable pulled "mule", pushed single loaded coal cars up the ramp to the unloader. On the other side, the empty would roll down a downslope, through a spring switch, and then up a vrty short, very steep incline, before rolling back thru the spring switch, and rolling down alongside the coaling dock unloader. Bot Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman magazines, have had those coal dock pics before; so it might be possible to get ideas for the "Rollback" from them.

The prototype and the Bemo system use a standard gauge ramp with the rollbocks on the ng between the std.g. rails. As you shunt the s.g wagon along the ramp, the axle hooks a rollbock and the wagon is lowered by the ramp decending. The prototype used rods between the rollbock to carry the brakeline. The model uses the s.g. couplings for coupling. Gauge is 750mm /8.6mm (some were 1000mm) so my prototypical