The Russian Decapod Steam Engine Doesn't Fit US Rails! 

That's a great museum. I've been there a couple times, but it's been quite a few years.

Still running like it just came out of the factory

And at least total surviors 40 in china, Russian, Ukraine and even Mongolia of all places known the Ye and Ea and EM class Making this loco and the S160 and the SY Mikados the class with the most survivors.

I think everyone used to have a lot of different gauges. The States had gauges all over the place until the end of the Civil War, when the federal government sorta mandated a standard, although even there, they still allowed a lot of narrow gauge to continue running. Some railroad museums even have double-gauged rails so they can run both standard and narrow gauge, and I saw pictures of a place in Europe that's running triple gauge, one standard and two, different narrow gauge lines on a piece of the same route. Outside of steam locomotive drivers, it doesn't seem like a huge problem to change gauges on individual locomotives or cars. The real challenge is that changing ALL of them, plus all the rails, switches, etc, while somehow still keeping everything moving, is a logistics nightmare. I may try to do a video on the changeover in the States if I can find enough good info on it. There were definitely some interesting solutions during the transition.

@@Industrial_Revolution Australia still has a lot of gauges, up north east they use narrow gauge in the east they use standard and south east is standard and broad gauge

@fuzzle426 Is there much double-gauge there? Different gauges do have different advantages.

Why is it that Australians always have to interject how they do things, and always preface it by "In Australia". Literally nobody cares.

@@Industrial_RevolutionThe state of Victoria has mainline trains in both 4’8” and 5’3” running into the main railway terminal in downtown Melbourne with dual gauge track in the terminal and switchyards. The interstate trains are mostly 4’8” but all the metropolitan network is 5’3” as are the regional trains to the east and south of the city. The northern and western lines are dual gauge 4’8” and 5’3”. There used to be 2’6” guage lines in a number of places but other than two tourist railways those are now closed (but there is still a connection between the 2’6” and 5’3” lines at Belgrave). There were also a number of meter gauge logging railways (that connected to the 2’6” lines which carried the timber to the 5’3” main lines)… And then you get into the other states with 3’6”, 2’ and other weird gauges. All this was because there was an original agreement that all the trains in Australia would be the Irish broad gauge of 5’ 3” and Victoria had their trains running when New South Wales hired an English engineer who decided to go English Standard Gauge instead…

When I went to look for this video, youtube reminded me that I'd already seen it :) There's been a lot of questions about regauging, so I'll probably do a video about that after I've done more research on it.

The Russian gauge of five feet, was mandated by the Russian Czar. The reason was so that invading European armies could not invade by rushing in on trains. This did work when the Germans invaded in 1941.

And Russia uses the British Imperial units because Tsar Peter the Great wanted a precisely defined set of units based on what he found in England when he visited.

@@allangibson8494 Couldn’t the Tsar work out that the metric system was vastly superior to the cumbersome and inefficient imperial system?

@@smedleyfarnsworth263 The metric system hadn’t been invented yet in 1698 and France still had over thirty different definitions of the inch, foot and yard (with a variable number of inches in a foot from 11 to 17).

That story's been around for quite a while, although people have recently started to question if that's actually the case. Early in railroad history, there were a LOT of different gauges, including many really close to today's standard gauge. The tended to be made around available wagon sizes at the time. It's still agreed that the width came from being the carriage width you needed if you had two horses, side by side, but that exact gauge? That's where the questions are today.

Thanks!

i just looked it up and it looks like it is standard gauge there. it's possible some of it was laid slightly off, though. Curves can always squeal, especially with worn rail or wheels.

it was usual to slightly increase the gauge for curves, a little for broad curves, slightly more for tighter ones. This was especially good for the long rigid wheelbases of eight and ten coupled locomotives. The squealing might be because the track panels were built for straights, but were then moved, and bent to be used in a curve: the gauge would then be a bit tight.

@@Industrial_Revolution That’s the old Northern Central Division of the PRR. The Stewartstown tourist line went belly up but is back in operation today as the Northern Central Railway. I rode the line just a month ago and there’s a lot of squealing on curves. The conductor blamed it on low speed operation on a railroad graded by the PRR for 50 MPH running.

On of the old Russia-intended ones? Is it close-by?

That's a LOT of drivers!

@@Industrial_Revolution absolutely a lot of drivers and pictures show just how insanely big the front cylinders were to utilize the low pressure steam as the cylinders shared steam like a triple expansion engine on old steam ships.

I've heard there were a handful of triple-expansion steam locomotives, but can't find details right now.

@@Industrial_Revolution Delaware & Hudson

Yep, the Russian Decapods were all made in the US and Canada, anyway.

I'm hoping someone knows how common those frogs were. You're the first to mention just machining down the wheels a bit to deal with it, though. Now that you mention it, you're right. You should be able to easily take off that extra 1 3/4" of width from the outside up a bit. How tall are the problem frogs? Just an inch or so? I don't think I've ever seen one.

@@Industrial_Revolution Self-guarding frogs are still very prevalent on industrial and yard tracks where speeds of less than 15 mph are used. The risers for the wings or ridges that make them self-guarding are about 1 1/2 inches higher than the running surface and are slightly wider than the normal wheel width on standard gauge. I don't think there is enough metal to remove to make the tires narrow enough to traverse a self-guarded frog and leave enough to clamp onto the wheel center if there would be any left at all. These locos had a lower axle loading than most 2-8-2s but because of the extra driving wheelset, they were more powerful. That meant they were well-suited to branch lines and railroads with light rail in the track as long as they could negotiate the curves. This was not long after the Panama Canal had been finished and a number of the construction locos from there were brought back and regauged in the same manner. The Panama Railroad and the construction railroads for the canal were 5-foot gauge. Most of the construction locos were 2-6-0s. The Panama Railroad was standard-gauged not long after the KCS got the concession to operate it just a few years ago.

@royreynolds108 funny you mention the Panama Canal. I have a video coming up on one of the original mules in a few weeks. That amount of metal is the same reason to question only the tires being replaced. That's 1 3/4" overhang on the inside with some pretty thin metal.

Gee... I wonder where they got a name like that. I wonder if there's any locomotive names that have funny stories behind them, then they stuck. The closest I know of is the Big Boy.

I hadn't thought about the option to double-gauge the lines, but you're right. They're too close together for that to work.

@@Industrial_Revolution It is the usual game with Russia: everything is a bit different so it does not fit, like caliber 152mm instead of 155mm.

I knew about that one, but only because I talked with someone at the Illinois Railway Museum who was trying to figure out how to re-gauge one to work on their standard gauge lines.

:) So you configured them to run ultra-narrow gauge?

@@Industrial_Revolution they’re actually HO scale models

Yep. Ultra-narrow, 16.5mm gauge. Too bad you can't run them in steam, though.

What I heard about Brunel's train was that, although it was far better by nearly every measure, the extra costs were just too much to take. It cost twice as much to build railbeds and the extra width meant a bridge or tunnel that would hold two tracks before would now only hold one, more than doubling those costs. In the end, money won.

The actual gauge was 7 ft 1/4 inch.

I'm not surprised. Cars are easy. Locomotives are more challenging.

@@Industrial_Revolution Locos are swapped at this location.

@royreynolds108 makes sense.

I didn't find pricing. Do you know how much railroads had to pay for these, vs a comparable locomotive?

Actually, the USRA got them and gave them out to railroads needing more locomotive power. They did this to help the war effort.

I'm not surprised. Toronto did 4' 10 7/8". I hear transit places do it specifically to prevent freight from going onto transit lines.

@@Industrial_Revolution This was a screw up that is typical for Boston MBTA

Doesn't really help on the curves since the flanges on the inside will still hit the rail. What I have seen on a few, but not many, is that you skip the flanges on the center driver only, which gives you a bit more flexibility on curves. This one didn't do that, and I don't know if any of them did.

Well, it wasn't an issue for the non-drivers, since they're mounted on bogies, anyway, which are mounted on center pins. For drivers, going wider would have required moving all the pistons steam lines, reversing gear, etc, outward. Easier than moving inward, but still not trivial. To move in, I don't know if they had to change anything on the frame or not. Remember that these were made in the US, where they were used to working with standard gauge at that point, so the frames may have been built for it and may not have needed much alteration. At the museum, they told me they only changed the wheels, so I wonder if the original, 5' gauge wheels had spacers or extra-wide hubs to cover that extra 1 3/4". Next time I see one, I'll try to get a camera around behind the wheels, if I can.

@@Industrial_Revolution cheers, it would be interesting to know. Logic would dictate that if they were originally intended for 5’ gauge then the frames would have been spaced further apart on the original design. Changing that spacing would be simple, as the frame stretchers could have been made smaller. However, it would have been an expensive modification to change the cylinder block casting, assuming it was a single piece casting.

Well the cylinders didn't move in this case. Next time I see one of these, I'm going to try to get a camera around behind the wheels.

More recently, I've heard Europeans commenting that it also prevents them from invading other countries that weren't part of USSR.

Entire new wheels. Since they likely cast their own, it probably wasn't as big a deal as it would seem, and I assume the old ones just got melted back down and recast.

​@@Industrial_Revolution no they did not cast new wheels. The put wider steel tires on the existing cast iron wheels. If you check the back side, the tires hang off the back, and are really thick. Also some of them WERE sent to Russia, but as you say, the Bolshevic revolution stopped the order cold. There were about 1200 ordered in total and about 800 had been delivered. This locomotive worked very well and filled the Russian's needs well, so they ended up making thousands of more copies themselves. I have been ti Russia 26 years ago, and went to a railway museum where they had a Russian made copy of one of these on display.

@@pontiacguy5190indeed. There were a relatively small number sent to Finland, which also uses 5’ broad gauge, and more were ordered by the USSR during WWII as well.

Just replace the tires on the cast iron wheel centers and put the wheels on a new pilot axle and new tender axles with adjusted brake beams. Basically, the tires are the consumable items on the driver's wheels.

@royreynolds108 I've seen many sources now saying the drivers were replaced and others saying only the tires. When I next see one, I'll try to get a camera around behind the wheels.

Since there were so many being produced, I assume there was some dual-gauge (at least) track laid to a port, where they could be loaded onto ships. There were others produced at 5' gauge, too, like the Panama Canal mules, which were built in the US and shipped to Panama. Russia did build some beasts of steam locomotives. They just added more drivers to distribute the weight better. More non-articulated drivers does limit your curves more, but lets you save money on the tracks. Biggest I found is the AA20, a 4-14-4 locomotive, although only a couple were built.

@@Industrial_RevolutionIndeed, although as far as I know, only a single AA-20 was built, and it was a failure.

@Lucius_Chiaraviglio I think I read they planned four, but only built two. I can't imagine it handled curves very well.

@@Industrial_Revolution Wikipedia says just 1 was built. And it had terrible trouble with curves and switches. Although I wonder if it would have worked on the Union Pacific (assuming you could re-gauge it to Standard Gauge, which may be a bad assumption)? The Union Pacific's 9000 class 4-12-2 locomotives had fairly long and successful careers on the flatland parts of their track.

@Lucius_Chiaraviglio There's a lot more complexity than people realize when it comes to driver size, number, articulated or not, etc. I'll be making a video or two on this. The thing I don't know is why they didn't put blind (flangeless) drivers in the center to better handle curves

For nearly everything, yes. The one place that it's more complex is the drivers on steam locomotives. You want the connecting rods right up against the drivers, rather than running longer pins to connect them, and moving the rods, pistons, etc, all in is not so easy.

After the US Civil War, railroads and locomotive works got good at changing railroad gauge.

I've heard about that one. All the stuff Brunel said it would do, it did do. Smoother ride. Faster. More stable. Also doubled the costs per mile of track, more than doubled the cost per mile for tunnels, bridges, etc. If he had been first, it probably would have become standard gauge, but didn't end up happening that way.

@@Industrial_Revolution No and the Russian gauge is only different because they wanted something that an invading enemy could not use.

Brunel's broad gauge was 7 feet and one-quarter inch.

If you've ever seen wheels being transported, wheels and axles tend to be a single component, even today. Fortunately, those are pretty trivial to swap, and you're only looking at 1.75" on each side or, worst case, just replace the whole bogie assembly. Not a big deal, since those would attach the same everywhere. The drivers were the challenge, since they have to connect to all the running gear located JUST outside the wheels. In the states, 50 years earlier, after the civil war, a lot of locomotives had to be regauged to make them wider, to get up to standard gauge, which is much easier, since you could just add spacers to move things out a bit, but you can't really grind down 1.75" of frame at every connection point to move things in. There's been a lot of questions on this, and I'm not an expert at regauging, but it sounds like it'd be a good topic for a video if I can find info on it. I suspect there's probably enough info on the post-civil war regauging to work with. I'll add that to my topic list.

@@Industrial_Revolution Many railroads in the South up to the end of the War Between the States were gauged 5 to 6 feet; so regauging would have been making the tracks narrower not wider. An interesting tidbit: the GENERAL and the TEXAS from The Great Locomotive Chase fame are still in existence and are still to the gauge of the Western & Atlantic RR gauge of 4 ft 9 inches. The W&A was and is still owned by the State of Georgia(. It was leased to the L&N and now the CSX Corp.

@@royreynolds108 I think I'm going to do a regauging video about the post-Civil War era. Need to do a bunch of research before I can do that one. The Decapod is certainly not the first time regauging has ever happened, and there's various ways to do it.

You know, there's actually been a lot of discussion on this. There are some who seem in a position to know who swear the drivers were cast wide and tires put on to fit those new drivers. Others are absolutely sure that the drivers weren't changed, but the wider tires were put on. I haven't been able to verify it yet, but I suspect both may have happened. Since these were actually in production when the order was canceled, there's a good chance that not all the drivers had been cast yet. Possibly, where the drivers weren't already cast, new ones were cast but if the drivers were already cast, new, wider tires may have just been fitted on the narrower drivers. As I said, this is just a suspicion at this point, not anything I've been able to verify. Verification would likely be in the form of finding one with wide-cast wheels and no overhang on the inside, indicating a recast wheel, AND one with a 1 3/4 overhang on the inside, indicating the wheels were not recast for that one.

This is easy if you are next to it just reach around the driver and you can feel how far the tire extends beyond the driving wheel. That wheel center is the original one, not a replacement as that wouldn't have needed the wide tire.

Yep, unfortunately, I don't personally have one close at hand (about 500 miles to the nearest one, I think). Since there's suspicion that they are set up both ways, I'm leaning toward asking viewers to poke their cameras around the back of the drivers and post video. If we get enough, that'd go a long ways toward answering the question of 1) at least some drivers were definitely replaced or 2) at least some tires were replaced to original drivers or 3) definitely some drivers were replaced and some just replaced tires. Unfortunately, August was the slow time for youtube views for everyone, so a bad time to ask, and now vacation season is ending. Kind of leaning toward asking in the spring, as museums are opening back up and people are starting to travel again.

Seaboard Air Line? You'd expect to see wings in their locomotives :)

@@Industrial_Revolution yeap 544 on display in nc

Thanks!

Someone else mentioned that one. I might, maybe, be up there later this summer. Not sure yet.

1630

Actually, if no one had told me about it the first time I was at the museum, I'd have never noticed. A couple people here in the comments have mentioned who cares, though. Some lines used raised frogs on the outside of switches, etc, and these would cause problems for those extra-wide wheels when they ram into them. Otherwise, you just have to pay attention to it when you change the tires out, which should be a big deal.

A week or so ago, I heard someone saying that their 5' gauge was preventing them from being able to take their trains into other countries to invade, as well.

@@Industrial_Revolution Works both ways.

That one was Baldwin, but it looks like a few, different companies may have built them, according to Wikipedia. I've never heard mention of any frame changes needed. Next time I find one, I'll be trying to get a camera around behind the wheels to answer that question, as well as the new wheel vs just new tire question that many people have also asked.

It's been pointed out recently that it also prevents Russia from taking their trains into out countries to invade.

It is a fact that at the countries that border Russia, if you travel by train, and wish to continue by train in Russia, you get out of the "host" country train, walk across the border and get into a Russian train. And yes, done for defensive purposes to prevent invasion.

@davidrubin8228 not sure, outside Europe, how many international passenger lines run. In the states, you want to take a train from Chicago to Toronto, you take a train to Detroit, cross the border by bus, then get on a Canadian train to Toronto. Freights can cross, but not passenger trains.

The 5-ft gauge is an American design. At the time the railway between St. Petersburg and Moscow was designed and built, there was no gauge standardization anyway. You can't even say that a rail network existed in Europe.

@xandervk2371 5' was in the US and UK before that. The Tsar, upon recommendation of a committee established it as the Russian standard in 1843. No idea how long it took them to re-gauge all their lines.

That would seem easier, wouldn't it? I've never heard a reason for it, but as a guess, running a long, relatively thin rod at 90 degrees to the direction of torque, with all the power directed through that rod, would be more likely to bend and/or break. Someone else here in the comments may know for sure.

Know when those ones were built? I'm wondering if they got them before the revolution.

@@Industrial_Revolution basically days before, it was during the Russian Empire's involvement during WW1

And during World War II, more of the same basic design (with some updates) were built in the U. S. for Lend-Lease and shipped to the USSR in American ships flying the Soviet flag.

I didn't. I looked and found this... "The first rail line in Finland was opened in January 1862. As Finland was then the Grand Duchy of Finland, an autonomous state ruled in personal union by Imperial Russia where railways were also built to the (5 ft) broad track gauge of 1,524 mm (5 ft).[14] However the railway systems were not connected until the bridge over the River Neva was built in 1913.[15] Russian trains could not have run on Finnish tracks, because the Finnish loading gauge was narrower, until the connection was made and the Finnish structure gauge was widened. " So looks like same rail gauge, but narrower spaces for the locomotives and cars on those rails.

@@Industrial_Revolution Yeah, Finland and Russia used to have cross-border trains before CoViD, so the claim their networks are incompatible is bogus.

If that info I quoted is correct, the difference is not rail gauge, but maximum width of the locomotives and cars that'll fit through bridges, tunnels, etc. You could run trains from Finland into Russia, but not the other way. Really, though, even with different rail gauge, you can always run double-gauge where you need it.

It's just as tough if not worse having NATO next door

I mean I have also heard the reverse, that the Soviets altered their gauge to thwart invasion by the west via Finland. Both fit cold war paranoia but neither hold water. The difference of guage is a mere 4mm, not different enough to cause break of gauge issues for either side wanting to run trains on the others' tracks -though I imagine any passengers will notice a drop in ride quality.

I hadn't heard about that. Makes sense, though. Do you know how common those are? I've never noticed them, but to tell you the truth, I've also never looked for them.

@@Industrial_Revolution NOT BEING A MAINTENANCE OF WAY EMPLOYEE I AM NOT SURE!! THE STORY WAS ORIGINALLY READ BY MYSELF IN TRAINS MAGAZINE IN LATE 60s/VERY EARLY 70s! MY GUESS THE RAISED GUARDS ARE USED IN HEAVILY CURVED AREAS!

VERY COOL STORY BUT WHY ARE WE YELLING?

For Russian trains, yes. Guess there's no way Russia can drive their trains across the Pacific and put them on our rails.

@@Industrial_Revolution 🙂 No such way is necessary when the locs are already/still in the USA. As is/was the case with these locs...

There's a railroad non-profit in town that, from their on-line info, looks like they're trying to grow their presence. It could happen in the future.

They were US-built specifically for export to Russia. Most never made it there.

You know, it's weird. I've got plenty of sources claiming full driver replacement while others are claiming just tires. I'm wondering if some went one way and others went the other, especially since it looks like there were a few, different locomotive manufacturers making Russian Decapods, but not necessarily all at the same time. Maybe one did tires and another did drivers? Something that'll take more digging.

@@Industrial_Revolution the age of steam has the mid-continent railway museum’s #401 it has center blind drivers ( flangeless tires ) on it and the tires are wider then the wheels

I've never made it to the Age of Steam, but I've wanted to get there for quite a while.

@@robertdoench6237 Blind (flangeless) driver tires are always wider than the wheels so they will stay on the rails through the sharper curves with the long solid wheelbase.

@@royreynolds108 yes I know this but the flanged tires where wider then the cast wheel by several inches

Well, considering the new Bolshevik government surrendered to the Germans, the Allied Powers were a bit annoyed with them. And what critical infrastructure did the US destroy? Was building hundreds of locomotives and thousands of trucks for the Soviets during WWII part of that plan to destroy their infrastructure?

Actually it was not the U. S. who did not wish to make delivery. The Russian credit line was exhausted by removal of support of the U. K. and France, and would not be extended unless the Soviets continued the fight on the Eastern front.

@@brucereynolds7009 I also seem to remember reading that the Bolshevik government refused to pay the debts of the Imperial government.

@SynchroScore wouldn't surprise me.

Must coming straight from the new book by Medinskiy.

The majority right now use the US Standard Gauge. Is that the ideal gauge? According to Brunel, it's not.

Well, they were pre-soviet. They were also 100% american-made and they never shipped to russia.

WHEN SOMEONE IS COMMENTING ON SOMETHING THEY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT!! LOLOL!!

Tell me you have no idea what you're talking about, without saying you have no idea what you're talking about.

Most intelligent American anticommunist

@@Industrial_Revolution Should we tell him about the Little Joes? We've also got one of those at IRM.

Know if any of them are still around?