Re: Other side of Narrow Gauge: TasRail

I was really surprised at the very tight curvature in the track I saw, both on the coast line and on the line headed South. The builders seem to have taken full advantage of narrower gauge to snake around the terrain.

SRK

James Wrote:
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> There's a short but steep climb straight out of
> the Burnie yard on the line running south. The
> main line heading east follows the sea-side as far
> as Devonport before turning south-east and inland.
> Eventually it reaches a junction where it
> branches either north to Launceston or south to
> more distant Hobart. As with railroads around the
> world, there are many former branches no longer in
> use, many of which have had the rails pulled up
> and a few of which are now home to preservation
> organizations. The remaining portions of the
> state network--mostly the main lines--have seen
> some investment in recent years in an effort to
> get some of the heavy traffic off the highways.
>
> The Tasmanian network is one of the historic cases
> of the narrow gauge winning out versus a wide
> gauge. The original line running out of
> Launceston was laid to a wide gauge but was
> changed to 3 foot 6 for the sake of standization
> as the rest of the state network was built to
> narrow gauge. History has shown that in
> railroading, uniformity of track gauge matters a
> lot more than what the specific track gauge
> happens to be.