Re: 49-Inch-Gage By Mistake

Before seeing the explanation from Mr. Agassiz, I had always thought the H&TL was intended to be four feet. I know that there were lots of different popular gages in use as a consensus was developing toward the adoption of standard gage. But I don’t think I have ever heard of four-foot-gage. Even before standard gage was adopted, there was a general consensus around the gage of five feet. I wonder if four feet was just too close to five feet to acquire a following. Has anybody here ever heard of a four-foot-gage railroad?

Now with Mr. Agassiz’s explanation, we learn that the intended gage could not have been four feet. It had to be 4’-2”. But still, Mr. Agassiz’s one-inch discrepancy does not make sense according to the way he says it came about. If the gage was mistaken to be the back-to-back of the wheel flanges, then the mistake should have been 2-3”. That would have made the intended gage maybe 52”.

I suppose that is possible. This was the first railroad in the copper country, although there were a few incline cable trams used up there by the mines. I am not sure of their chronology, but I wonder if the intended gage of the H&TL was influenced by the incline trams. H&TL itself featured an incline cable tram at the mill end of its railroad to lower the cars individually down the escarpment of Torch Lake.