Divergent railroad tech

BlondieBC

Banned
useful if you have problem with sand drift in deserts.

If you want to deal with sand problems such as Sahara, one probably should look at the French railroad built partway across the Sahara in Algeria. Or some of SWA railroads built built by Germans. Sand does seem to be manageable for modern railroads.
 
Stone might work if your railroads remain rather primitive, pre steam locomotion size and weight. Not so much along the lines of 'rails' as some sort of grooved flangeway or curb (either outside or inside the wheel line) to provide redimentary guidence. It would, in effect, be a glorified roadway. Your vehicles would be little or no different from road carts/coaches in design or weight.

If you are looking for some alternate pre-industrial forerunner to flanged wheel/metal rail technology, may I suggest stone paved roads with a roughly 5 foot wide pavement stepped up about 6"-8" higher than the sides? Wooden cart wheels could be roughly guided by this "reverse flange" while being drawn by horses. As an alternative to trying to draw wagons across sand, it might be a viable-though, again, primitive-technology.

Once powered locomotion is developed, I think it becomes as obsolete as courduroy roads...
 
Thing is, the main advantage of railways, and the main reason they were adopted , was not guidance, but the reduction of friction. Much heavier loads could be moved on an iron wheel rolling on an iron bed than on wooden wheels on roads. Hard stone might provide a comparable degree of low rolling resistance, but the stone would have to be dressed very smooth and be very hard.

I don't think this admits of a solution. The entire rationale of railroads is in the iron to iron interface.
 
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