Design a better wagon for British Tanks

I haven't put much thought into this but if the British insisted in moving tanks around by rail in the 1930's is there any way of building a flatbed wagon that will give the tank designers a helping hand by reducing the restrictions placed on them by loading gauge and axle weight?

For 12 years I was a gauging specialist for a small company whose main aim was to extract the most out of the available UK network ... but most of it was based on computer simulated desktop studies.

My initial thought is some kind of 4 axle well wagon which would allow anything up to 80 tons with a max width of the tank being approximately 2.8m but allowing something taller than OTL possibly. This presumption is based on the W6 (the smallest gauge) ... anyway I'm rambling a bit now. Any thoughts anyone?

Anything that disposed of the railway width restriction would be a good thing but I suggest (and have done a thread [Napier Culverin] on it previously) that it would have been better had they gone for a proper road tank transporter. This would not only free up tank design but be a potent force multiplier and strategic choice provider anywhere they wanted to deploy tanks.

Quite possibly they would want to move these wider tanks by rail in the UK so there would still be a role for a better wagon and here I have to bow to your greater knowledge.

Well, the British Army did have a road capable tank transporter. The Scammell Pioneer Semi-Trailer from the 30's. These were capable of a 20-ton load and lead onto a 20-30 ton capable load, meaning that they could transport pretty much all of the British tanks produced before and during WW2.

A bigger investment in these could produce a far more capable transporter than OTL, which could then influence Tank design due to not being limited by the loading gauge etc of the railways

Ian Hathaway said:

I haven't put much thought into this but if the British insisted in moving tanks around by rail in the 1930's is there any way of building a flatbed wagon that will give the tank designers a helping hand by reducing the restrictions placed on them by loading gauge and axle weight?

For 12 years I was a gauging specialist for a small company whose main aim was to extract the most out of the available UK network ... but most of it was based on computer simulated desktop studies.

My initial thought is some kind of 4 axle well wagon which would allow anything up to 80 tons with a max width of the tank being approximately 2.8m but allowing something taller than OTL possibly. This presumption is based on the W6 (the smallest gauge) ... anyway I'm rambling a bit now. Any thoughts anyone?

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Tunnels and cuts were the main problem!

I've seen it mentioned that while Soviet, German and US tanks had a superstructure which to a degree overhung their tracks, British tanks carried hull and turret between their tracks apparetly to improve manoeuvrability over difficult terrain.

Given the lack of problems this manoeuvrability seems to have caused Soviet, German and US tanks, we seem to have given ourselves a self inflicted wound here.

Well I'm scraping all of this up from the depths of my memory as its been few years and my speciality was actually looking at how track movement and maintenance affected the relationship with structures rather than the rolling stock. And also my knowledge does not go back as far as the 30's and 40's despite what my kids think but the principals of static load gauges haven't changed in a long, long time.

Basically there is a defined shape that you can fit things into ... you have a predefined static gauge, in this case the W6, and you place the object you want to fit through the rail network onto the W6 and if everything fits within the lines then you're good to go. The W6 is attached.

The W6 is the smallest gauge and defines a go anywhere shape. You will notice that there is a line on the diagram that shows a split between kinematic and static gauges. In simple terms at the low part of the gauge allowance needs to be made for station platforms so you need to include calculations for the centre throw of the vehicle dependant on track radius. Centre throw is the amount the object deviate from the centre line of the track ... on tight radii this throw is greater than shallower radii to the point where it need not be considered beyond a radii of 3000m or greater.

A standard UK platform should be 730mm from the track at a height of 915mm to allow a safe distance from the step of a passenger train to the platform. If you've ever stepped from a train after being given a warning about "mind the gap" it means the platform is either too low or too far away and is therefore non-standard. (I'm still rambling by the way as I'm remembering things they are just pouring onto the page).

Given that the standard gauge of the track (the distance between the rails) is 1432mm and that we can add 730mm to either side we come to a width of 2892mm. Given that you have to allow 50mm between a vehicle and the platform edge and that you need to take into account maintenance tolerances, rail wear and one or two others it's easy to understand why the W6 gauge states that the lower part of any vehicle should be no wider than 2700mm. So I guess that is the width of vehicle we are stuck with.

PMN1 said:

I've seen it mentioned that while Soviet, German and US tanks had a superstructure which to a degree overhung their tracks, British tanks carried hull and turret between their tracks apparetly to improve manoeuvrability over difficult terrain.

Given the lack of problems this manoeuvrability seems to have caused Soviet, German and US tanks, we seem to have given ourselves a self inflicted wound here.

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I've seen the same mentioned. What is interesting to note is that if the bed height of a flatbed wagon is lowered the Sherman will easily fit within the W6 gauge although no account has been taken of the centre throw. The quick comparison below is not perfectly to scale but the width of the Sherman is 2620mm or so I believe.

And here is a Mk IV which sits slightly outside the W6 Gauge at about the the height of a standard flatbed wagon ... so maybe the loading gauge wasn't such a limitation ?!?!

This is one of the areas I find worryingly interesting...

...I fear I may turn into a trainspotter.

I note that you have 2.82 metres width. If you look here http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/gansg/2-track/02track3.htm you see a picture of a '30s vintage gauge good for most lines in the UK at 9 feet, 2.74m.
That's a bit tighter, but a number of UK tanks were narrower even than this, by a few inches.

This over-zealous width restriction seems odd. Parts of the empire were on narrower rail gauges around the metre gauge, but that seems unlikely as a factir given that likely deployment would be to the continent with it's more capacious berne gauge. Perhaps they wanted to be able to rail them everywhere in the UK, or wanted to fit them on old/small wagons, or perhaps other parts of the UK infrastructure were constraints (e.g. docks).

the linked page does note

Most British goods stock was roughly eight feet wide, possibly the widest single vehicle being the guards van with side look-outs and the BR standard van was only eight feet nine inches wide at the duckets. The widest early BR era goods vehicle I know of was the 'ferry high open' (as per the Peco long wheelbase tarpaulin wagon) which was eight feet eight inches wide over the side posts.

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That certainly does match with the around 8-foot width I've seen on a lot of brit tanks. E.g. the Crusader was apparently 8' 8" wide.

Edit to add:
Doh! Should read pages properly when linking them.

In practice these widths were very much an upper limit and only applied on main lines, where branch lines or lines in industrial areas were concerned the upper limit on the width of a load was typically about eight feet.

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Perhaps someone can come up with POD to upgrade the British Isles to match Indian broad gauge - maybe as a mega public works project
3.66m gauge-width would let you shift some serious tanks around, given that the germans managed to cram 3.65m of TigerII through their network which was apparently on 3.15 gauge width - must have required some creative routing.

b0ned0me said:

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This over-zealous width restriction seems odd. Parts of the empire were on narrower rail gauges around the metre gauge, but that seems unlikely as a factir given that likely deployment would be to the continent with it's more capacious berne gauge. Perhaps they wanted to be able to rail them everywhere in the UK, or wanted to fit them on old/small wagons, or perhaps other parts of the UK infrastructure were constraints (e.g. docks).

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I've seen the suggestion that it was to fit gauges in the Empire....the other is that a smaller vehicle is cheaper....

b0ned0me said:

Perhaps someone can come up with POD to upgrade the British Isles to match Indian broad gauge - maybe as a mega public works project

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That would require replacing pretty much the entire network, and throw you out of kilter with most of the rest of the two continents you actually trade with. I'd have suggested increasing the loading gauge to match the French or American one, but that would require nearly as much work now I come to think about it, so that's a no-go, unless you spread the work out over say 20+ years, so that you upsized the loading gauge as part of the normal maintenance routine, though that wouldn't help here unless you started in say the early 1920s.

MattII said:

That would require replacing pretty much the entire network, and throw you out of kilter with most of the rest of the two continents you actually trade with. I'd have suggested increasing the loading gauge to match the French or American one, but that would require nearly as much work now I come to think about it, so that's a no-go, unless you spread the work out over say 20+ years, so that you upsized the loading gauge as part of the normal maintenance routine, though that wouldn't help here unless you started in say the early 1920s.

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Given the railway strikes prior to that which showed how the country could be brought to a standstill, I think most governments would be wary about spending more money on the railways. If money is going to be spent, its more likely to be on the roads.

The railway gauge limitations are not just an issue for the '30s and '40s if anyone has ever travelled in a Virgin Cross Country Class 220 will notice just how narrow it seems inside. The dimensions of this train actually sparked warning bells within the industry that something needed to be done so that the most could be made out of the existing, mainly Victorian, network. A study was commisioned entitled Reducing Uncertainty in Structure Gauging which looked at this very issue. I'm not suggesting you should read it all as Im sure most of you would find it incredibly dull (but you shoud at least look at WP3 and WP4 as those are my sections ). Basically there are so many unknowns or variables that the gauges produced are over cautious and over restrictive. With a little more understanding of the infrastructure and tighter controls where needed a larger loading gauge could be applied to most of the UK rail network.

PMN1 said:

Given the railway strikes prior to that which showed how the country could be brought to a standstill, I think most governments would be wary about spending more money on the railways. If money is going to be spent, its more likely to be on the roads.

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Roads aren't much of a concern compared to the stuff that travels on them, and at that time (early 1920s), for trucks at least, diesel was only just overtaking steam as the preferred method of power, so trucks won't be in vogue as a major method of haulage for a while.

MattII said:

That would require replacing pretty much the entire network, and throw you out of kilter with most of the rest of the two continents you actually trade with. I'd have suggested increasing the loading gauge to match the French or American one, but that would require nearly as much work now I come to think about it, so that's a no-go, unless you spread the work out over say 20+ years, so that you upsized the loading gauge as part of the normal maintenance routine, though that wouldn't help here unless you started in say the early 1920s.

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Believe me, it was intended as a joke. There's no way on earth you could make the numbers stack up for changing both the track and loading gauge to something as huge as they use in India.

However, since the French/german/Italian/swiss/belgian/dutch/danish/etc/etc/ all use the same standardised loading gauge since 1912 and are on the same track gauge as the UK then that would be perfectly feasible - in any other country but the UK.

Pencilling in a 50-year plan in 1930 to eventually move the UK to the same standard would have seen it completed a third of a century ago at a reasonable cost. Instead the relevant authorities are still sitting round today going - "oh, it would be nice if we could have big trains like they do on the continent, but even if we start tomorrow it would take decades, and think of the cost."

In the case of the crappy top-contact third-rail system the UK uses for electrics, they have been talking about modernising it to side or bottom contact since before the first world war, while foreigners have spent 100 years being baffled by why British trains fail whenever there is snow or leaf-fall. The alleged 'national standard' for electrification has been overhead wire since 1921, so naturally after a merger in the london network they tore down perfectly functional brand-new overhead wire in 1929 to replace it with the obsolete junk they are still using today.

There was apparently one single line in the whole country built to a larger loading gauge, the Great Central Main Line which was the most modern stretch of railway in the whole country for the period 1899-1969. At which point it was closed and torn up since of course there was no way anyone would ever again need a high-speed high-capacity rail link from London to the north, that could also be connected through to the southern ports for european traffic.

Looking about for something else I ran across this picture. It was to do with the whole common carrier mess and basically said that the railway companies had to accept loads even if they were out-size and bloody awkward to move, being done at night and using/closing multiple tracks, so that they made a loss on the job. It does suggest that larger tanks could be possibly moved but would interfere with other operations and probably have to take a circuitous route at night to fit. But I'm not the expert on these things.

PMN1 said:

Given the railway strikes prior to that which showed how the country could be brought to a standstill, I think most governments would be wary about spending more money on the railways. If money is going to be spent, its more likely to be on the roads.

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Well there was certainly a large expansion of the road network in the 30s thanks to a previous rise in vehicle ownership plus as a works programme to help combat unemployment during the depression. Even here though steam wagons such as the Sentinel were still mostly used since they could generate 4-5 times as much power as petrol engines, Britain having missed the boat somewhat on diesel engines. You also had fairly draconian taxes on heavy goods trucks over a certain weight, IIRC until fairly late in the decade they were still importing key components from Germany, combined with the common carrier provision imposed on the railway companies by the government it does suggest that they still leaned more towards the railways for moving freight.

Also weren't the railways still in private hands until after the war? I was under the impression that the Big Four owned and ran things outright, or did the government own the tracks and stations? If it's private companies then I can't see them spending all the time and money on re-gauging, especially not when the common carrier provision that they often had to carry freight at a loss.

One possible point of departure could be the Royal Commission on Road and Rail Transport of 1931, it didn't get an anywhere but the follow on Salter Report two years later did apparently suggest modifying part of the common carrier provision. Suppose as a quid pro quo the government allows the railway companies to withdraw from running freight on some of the small branch lines with that being taking over by road haulage, they're not forced to take goods even at a loss, and in return they have to improve the loading gauge on certain key lines? Combined with the introduction of licensing for heavy goods vehicles and making them pay the full cost of maintaining the roads via taxation and petrol duties as happened in our timeline it would put the two industries on a more equal footing and hopefully spur both on.

Yulzari said:

Anything that disposed of the railway width restriction would be a good thing but I suggest (and have done a thread [Napier Culverin] on it previously) that it would have been better had they gone for a proper road tank transporter. This would not only free up tank design but be a potent force multiplier and strategic choice provider anywhere they wanted to deploy tanks.

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Was Napier's Culverin engine a straight licensed built copy of Junker's Jumo 204 or did they make any alterations do you know? Since it seems to of been something of a forerunner of the Deltic, one of my favourite engines, for Napier more work on it in the 30s could have some interesting consequences.

Simon said:

It does suggest that larger tanks could be possibly moved but would interfere with other operations and probably have to take a circuitous route at night to fit. But I'm not the expert on these things.

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Oh yes, certainly. Providing you are starting from somewhere near a big railway and going somewhere similar, (i.e. ends of the journey are not down some little branch line) then with some amount of work and creative routing you can usually manage even a huge load. Did you find that picture here? But it's a bit like issuing a 20-kg rifle - just because you sometimes can carry it does not mean you always want to.

Simon said:

Also weren't the railways still in private hands until after the war? I was under the impression that the Big Four owned and ran things outright, or did the government own the tracks and stations?

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My impression is that it was a typical british compromise - in private hands but legislation had forcibly consolidated 120-odd companies into 4 big ones plus a few tiddlers. Also there were apparently various govt subsidies, soft loans and tax breaks available to fund 'modernization'.

Simon said:

Was Napier's Culverin engine a straight licensed built copy of Junker's Jumo 204 or did they make any alterations do you know? Since it seems to of been something of a forerunner of the Deltic, one of my favourite engines, for Napier more work on it in the 30s could have some interesting consequences.

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I think it was a straight licensed copy. The problem with diesel in britain seems to have been threefold:
- the aforementioned taxation on heavy road vehicles
- a general lack of r&d/investment caused by many small firms all competing for business, while not licensing their technologies aggressively to generate more income for R&D/investment the way e.g. Sulzer or MAN (or Junkers) did.
- a strong lobby for domestic coal rather than imported oil. This rapidly fell away in the thirties but was still significant for heavy engines (ships, locomotives).

I was proposing that the tank/loading gauge matter could have the Gordian knot cut by abandoning rail and using the Napier Culverin as the standard engine for both a tank transporter and a 1944 quality tank.

Britain isn't a big oil producer, but is a big coal producer, so reworking the tank transport network to run on oil instead of coal will only increase the volume of imports required.

yulzari said:

I was proposing that the tank/loading gauge matter could have the Gordian knot cut by abandoning rail and using the Napier Culverin as the standard engine for both a tank transporter and a 1944 quality tank.

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Trouble is, then you may need to upgrade some of the road system . It wasn't like every road in the UK could take a vehicle carrying a load 10 feet wide weighing 20-30 tons, never mind a convoy of 40-50 such vehicles.

MattII said:

Britain isn't a big oil producer, but is a big coal producer, so reworking the tank transport network to run on oil instead of coal will only increase the volume of imports required.

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That is a good observation but assuming the figure here are accurate then I don't think a fleet of tank transporters are going to make a significant difference:

Great Britain in 1935 imported nearly 10,000,000 tons of oil, including 400,000 tons of lubricating oil, 700,000 tons of kerosene, 2,500,000 tons of gas and fuel oil and 4,500,000 tons of petrol.

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The proportions are interesting - 45% petrol/gasoline (of which some would have gone to aviation) versus 31% of gas/fuel and kerosene that would have been split between diesel engines, hot bulb engines, lighting, heating and all sorts of other uses - so it's hard to get a feel for how many engines there were running on non-petrol oil products, but petrol seems to have been the main motor fuel. Nowadays it's almost even.