Elmira Telegram, March 17, 1907
Railroad Gauges
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The Story of the Changes is Told
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From Broad to Standard
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Why the Six-Foot Gauge Had to Give
Way to the Standard Gauge of George
Stephenson, of the Present Time - An
Interesting Narrative Which Railroad
Men Will Appreciate Very Much.
The very sight of the words six-foot gauge road at the head of an article in the Telegram recently, takes me back to my youthful days when I was engaged in the construction of the Utica, Chenango & Susquehanna Valley railroad, and the double tracking of a portion of the Erie railroad.
It is interesting to recall that the original D., L. & W. road from Jersey City to Binghamton was a six-foot gauge. Also that the Erie road, which was open from the Hudson river to Elmira in about 1849, and few years later, to Dunkirk, with all of its branches and connections to Chicago and elsewhere, was of six-foot gauge, and was operated as such for about thirty years.
The Albany & Susquehanna railroad (now Delaware & Hudson,) from Albany to Binghamton, was also built with a six-foot: gauge, and operated upon that gauge for many years. It is also quite interesting to recall that the Utica, Chenango & Susquehanna Valley railroad, (now D., L. & W.) was a six-foot gauge, as was also a road between Syracuse and Binghamton.
It is quite noticeable that these roads connecting with the Now. York Central at Albany, Utica and Syracuse, all adopted the gauge of tho Erie road with which they connected at their southern or western ends instead of the four-foot eight and one-half-inch standard railroad gauge of the New York Central. Perhaps the principal reason for this was that these several roads from Albany, Utica and Syracuse were built quite largely to reach the coal fields over the Erie and Lackawanna systems for the purpose of obtaining cheaper fuel.
The six-foot gauge trains from Norwich and the south via Waterville, for many years ran into the New York Central station at Utica, under an agreement with the Central, which permitted them to come in on the six-foot gauge, and the track over which they came into the Central station at Utica had three rails, making two gauges,
one for the Central cars, and the other for the broad gauge cars.
Along about the year 1875 - I do not recall the exact year or years - the D.L, & W. and the Erie put in third rails on their entire systems, unless possibly on some small branches, and ran cars of both gauges, that is both four foot, eight and one-half inch and six foot in the same trains, all the cars running on the same rail on one side and the narrow gauge and the wide gauge wheels running on separate rails on the opposite side. Following this no more six-foot gauge rolling stock was constructed, and as soon as a greater part of the rolling stock became of the narrower gauge, the third rail was taken up, and thereafter only standard gauge rolling stock used.
Following the change in gauge of the Erie and the D., L. & W., the roads from Albany, Utica and Syracuse to Binghamton quickly followed suit, abandoning their six-foot gauge and changing their road to the standard four-foot, eight and one-half inch gauge.
A peculiar incident occurred in this connection at Utica, which ended the regular practice of the D., L. & W. passenger trains running into the Central station. The contract with the Central was to allow the southern road to come in on a six-foot gauge, and as soon as it was changed to the standard gauge it is said the-Central refused to allow them to enter their station longer, on the ground that they were not under contract to allow them to enter upon a standard gauge.
The passenger cars on the six-foot gauge roads were about eighteen inches wider than the cars of today, and consequently the seats were much more roomy and commodious, and the aisles wider than those of the cars of the present time.
To enable four-foot eight and one-half-inch gauge cars to run over five-foot tracks, the wheels were made-with broad treads, and in this way the matter. was gotten along with, as to freight cars, to some extent, but of course five-foot gauge cars could not run on their own trucks on four-foot eight and one-half inch tracks.
The change from all other gauges to the standard gauge of four-foot eight and one-half inches has gone on rapidly for the last few years, and if the time has not now arrived, it soon will, when the standard four-foot eight and one-half inch gauge will be the only railroad gauge in use on steam and electric roads in the United
States, Canada and Mexico.
It is natural to ask upon what theory or for what reason cars were ever built of a gauge with the old measure of four-foot eight and one-half inches. When George Stevenson patented the first locomotive to haul “wagons” on rails, he made his locomotives and cars of the same gauge as that of tho ordinary road wagon, the place of which they were destined so rapidly to acquire: so the dimension of the gauge which is in use by nearly all of the railroads today, came by chance, by reason of the gauge which custom had established for the ordinary road wagon, and over half a century of time in the railroad practice and experiments of the world have not improved upon George Stevenson's chance gauge.
It may surprise many of your readers, but it is nevertheless fact, that the gauge of the ordinary lumber wagon as in daily use throughout New York state, is the same as that of all the rolling stock in the great railroads of the world.
In the days of both six-foot and four-foot eight and one-half inch gauges, they were. distinguished as broad gauge and narrow gauge. After the six-foot gauge was a thing of the past, four-foot eight and one-half inches was called broad and a three-foot gauge narrow. The three-foot gauge was short-lived. R.W. S.
