stanames Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Greg and others
>
> Despite the long standing stories. Nither Lobato
> nor Cascade are built for standard gauge weight
> limits.
>
> It was common for many of the steel bridge
> components on the NG lines to have come from
> standard guage lines.
>
> In the late 1800s as the weight of standard gauge
> trains increased many of these bridges were
> replaced with stronger bridges and the old bridges
> often reused on the NG.
>
> For example all deck girders and the pin connected
> deck truss used for the bridge at Cimarron Creek
> (the NPS display) are recycled from various
> standard guage bridges that had to be replaced.
>
> The Labaot beidge was built in 1883 and I suspects
> its origional guiders were not recycled as this
> was to early for this practice to be in widespread
> use.
>
> The Cascade Creek Trestle was not constructed
> until 1889, and several of its deck girder spans
> were recycled from other standard guage routes of
> the D&RG.
>
> The bridges were designed by C. Shaler Smith, The
> overall bridge designs are not structually sound
> for even late 1800 standard guage trains. The
> single pier structure and overall desigh gets its
> end to end strength from the entire bridge
> structure and you will not find this bridge design
> in a standard guage bridge, The curved aspect of
> Cascade is an engineering marvel.
>
> Furthermore if you look at the length and height
> of the individual girders for these bridges you
> will find that they are way undersized for any
> standard guage use, even 1890 use.
>
> Since Cascade uses recycled deck gurder spans that
> were recycled from standard guage bridges that
> were not strong enough to hold standard guage
> trains of that era, I think it fair to say that
> Cascase was definately not built with the
> intention of ever having standard guage trains run
> over it.
>
> Stan
Thanks for your input Stan, I'll have to dig, somewhere in one of my books it stated that the idea was to standard gauge the San Juan Extension, because of how profitable it was becoming , of course that was before the silver crash in the 1890's, pretty sure that is part of the reason it was never was fully standard gauged.
Still a Student,
Dave
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/31/2021 03:26PM by davidtltc.
