I making good progress on the basement office - future home of my Minnesota Commercial Urban switch layout (freelanced). I hope my track ends up being better than this! [video=youtube_share;g11qWro1LzQ]http://youtu.be/g11qWro1LzQ[/video]
I believe it looks slightly worse than reality, due to camera angle and zoom. Still, it's a major soft spot and the photographer was just a bit brave being that close. Even though there is reference to the Milwaukee Road, I doubt such is true. This was probably ex-Minneapolis & St. Louis RY track. If so, it is naturally lighter rail and has not seen any truly major work in ages, since the 1950s. Boxcab E50
That trackage is better than the Minnesota Commercial has in some spots! They've gotten better (and worse in places too)!
Stourbridge: where's the video/embedded link in that page? I see nothing... RE: the Minn Commercial, and what's the track speed through there? 20? I think the ITM track is in better shape than that! We do 25, and that's 90year old rail!
as long as all the kinks and twists are 4 feet 8 1/2 inches apart, it's all good! It's very hard to model because of the physics and weight of the real thing and our models...
I had to google that (duh!) Found this good explanation for the measurement: http://www.alightintheattic.com/door2/cognitive/gauge.htm
On Saturday I rode a passenger excursion on the TC&W from Chanhassen to Hector, MN. Except for a few slow order spots where there was recent track work, the train ran at 30 mph.
Nancy- That would have actually been former MILW tracks, built with heavier rails and maintained much later in years than the old Louis segment shown in that video. Boxcab E50
Looks like fun. I'm sure most folks here know that the "track guage" story is not accurate. Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp
In this instance, Snopes "debunking" is very likely quite correct. But be careful- Even they slip up and get caught a few times.
Also I have seen instances where the investigators have allowed political preferences to shade their analyses. That being said, Snopes is a useful source if taken and accepted as one of many sources of information when one performs an informed and responsible analysis in forming a conclusion.
This has been debunked many time over many years. Only in England and a few other places did wagon axle lengths just happen to be the same as the chariot. In fact not all English wagons had the same width. If this was true then what about all the other gauges used in areas that the Romans were in for a lot longer then in the British Isles. Like the Loch Ness monster, Sasquatch, and Kato going to make lots of East Coast diesel engines,:tb-wink: myths have a life of their own.:tb-ooh:
I have seen track worse than that- and it was still in service. Kiamichi's ex-Frisco Arthur Sub stub from Hugo, OK north to Antlers was rated "excepted" per FRA regs, and it was scary to watch three diesels and a string of woodracks wobble their way north to Antlers. Until this track was rehabbed, there were several derailments- one which resulted in a section of rail piercing the fuel tank of one of the locomotives. Looking at that video, there was no way that train was running any faster than 10 MPH, and I wouldn's be surprised if he wasn't going less that that over that sunken section.
