Glad you liked it! I've definitely run into some new channels that way, myself.

In some areas, maybe. Mostly, no. A fully-loaded canal boat doesn't have much clearance in some of the more shallow areas of canals, so going deeper often isn't an option. If you're running empty, it'd be possible. In the case of this, particular boat, they do have a combination of things. They intentionally raised the canal level, and removed all the ballast and seats from the boat, just to get it to float high enough they could launch it into the canal. Just after I shot the video, they started reloading ballast by pumping water into the bottom, and also reloaded the benches onto the boat, all while letting water out of the canal to get it back to normal levels. All of that takes a while, and when I walked by 3 or 4 hours later, it still wouldn't quite fit under the bridge, but it was much closer.

They were US-built specifically for export to Russia. Most never made it there.

Well, it wasn't an issue for the non-drivers, since they're mounted on bogies, anyway, which are mounted on center pins. For drivers, going wider would have required moving all the pistons steam lines, reversing gear, etc, outward. Easier than moving inward, but still not trivial. To move in, I don't know if they had to change anything on the frame or not. Remember that these were made in the US, where they were used to working with standard gauge at that point, so the frames may have been built for it and may not have needed much alteration. At the museum, they told me they only changed the wheels, so I wonder if the original, 5' gauge wheels had spacers or extra-wide hubs to cover that extra 1 3/4". Next time I see one, I'll try to get a camera around behind the wheels, if I can.

@@Industrial_Revolution cheers, it would be interesting to know. Logic would dictate that if they were originally intended for 5’ gauge then the frames would have been spaced further apart on the original design. Changing that spacing would be simple, as the frame stretchers could have been made smaller. However, it would have been an expensive modification to change the cylinder block casting, assuming it was a single piece casting.

Well the cylinders didn't move in this case. Next time I see one of these, I'm going to try to get a camera around behind the wheels.

When I went to look for this video, youtube reminded me that I'd already seen it :) There's been a lot of questions about regauging, so I'll probably do a video about that after I've done more research on it.

More recently, I've heard Europeans commenting that it also prevents them from invading other countries that weren't part of USSR.

Back then, the bottom of that dam was as far as they could go upstream. Now, they can keep going. They do stock the river now, including some at Frankemuth. Not sure if they stock upriver of there or not.

It's gone through a lot of things in the last, what, 50 years it's been there? I remember when they opened it, and the whole thing was a working grist mill, with flour and other "grist mill like-stuff" sold on part of the first floor. Then they took over the whole first floor for a gift shop, then a coffee shop. I was up there again a few weeks ago and they're a huge, new building next to it, and attached, for the new place. Zender's owns it, so they don't really have to immediately make money off it. The mill may have been better off moved out to Grandpa Tiny's Farm (a small, living history farm a few miles away, just outside of town).

If you've ever seen wheels being transported, wheels and axles tend to be a single component, even today. Fortunately, those are pretty trivial to swap, and you're only looking at 1.75" on each side or, worst case, just replace the whole bogie assembly. Not a big deal, since those would attach the same everywhere. The drivers were the challenge, since they have to connect to all the running gear located JUST outside the wheels. In the states, 50 years earlier, after the civil war, a lot of locomotives had to be regauged to make them wider, to get up to standard gauge, which is much easier, since you could just add spacers to move things out a bit, but you can't really grind down 1.75" of frame at every connection point to move things in. There's been a lot of questions on this, and I'm not an expert at regauging, but it sounds like it'd be a good topic for a video if I can find info on it. I suspect there's probably enough info on the post-civil war regauging to work with. I'll add that to my topic list.

Actually, if no one had told me about it the first time I was at the museum, I'd have never noticed. A couple people here in the comments have mentioned who cares, though. Some lines used raised frogs on the outside of switches, etc, and these would cause problems for those extra-wide wheels when they ram into them. Otherwise, you just have to pay attention to it when you change the tires out, which should be a big deal.

That would seem easier, wouldn't it? I've never heard a reason for it, but as a guess, running a long, relatively thin rod at 90 degrees to the direction of torque, with all the power directed through that rod, would be more likely to bend and/or break. Someone else here in the comments may know for sure.

For nearly everything, yes. The one place that it's more complex is the drivers on steam locomotives. You want the connecting rods right up against the drivers, rather than running longer pins to connect them, and moving the rods, pistons, etc, all in is not so easy.

After the US Civil War, railroads and locomotive works got good at changing railroad gauge.

Since there were so many being produced, I assume there was some dual-gauge (at least) track laid to a port, where they could be loaded onto ships. There were others produced at 5' gauge, too, like the Panama Canal mules, which were built in the US and shipped to Panama. Russia did build some beasts of steam locomotives. They just added more drivers to distribute the weight better. More non-articulated drivers does limit your curves more, but lets you save money on the tracks. Biggest I found is the AA20, a 4-14-4 locomotive, although only a couple were built.

@@Industrial_RevolutionIndeed, although as far as I know, only a single AA-20 was built, and it was a failure.

@Lucius_Chiaraviglio I think I read they planned four, but only built two. I can't imagine it handled curves very well.

@@Industrial_Revolution Wikipedia says just 1 was built. And it had terrible trouble with curves and switches. Although I wonder if it would have worked on the Union Pacific (assuming you could re-gauge it to Standard Gauge, which may be a bad assumption)? The Union Pacific's 9000 class 4-12-2 locomotives had fairly long and successful careers on the flatland parts of their track.

@Lucius_Chiaraviglio There's a lot more complexity than people realize when it comes to driver size, number, articulated or not, etc. I'll be making a video or two on this. The thing I don't know is why they didn't put blind (flangeless) drivers in the center to better handle curves

Well, considering the new Bolshevik government surrendered to the Germans, the Allied Powers were a bit annoyed with them. And what critical infrastructure did the US destroy? Was building hundreds of locomotives and thousands of trucks for the Soviets during WWII part of that plan to destroy their infrastructure?

Actually it was not the U. S. who did not wish to make delivery. The Russian credit line was exhausted by removal of support of the U. K. and France, and would not be extended unless the Soviets continued the fight on the Eastern front.

@@brucereynolds7009 I also seem to remember reading that the Bolshevik government refused to pay the debts of the Imperial government.

@SynchroScore wouldn't surprise me.

Na, just be sure to get a deposit up front if there's a revolution coming.

It's been pointed out recently that it also prevents Russia from taking their trains into out countries to invade.

Thanks!

I'm hoping someone knows how common those frogs were. You're the first to mention just machining down the wheels a bit to deal with it, though. Now that you mention it, you're right. You should be able to easily take off that extra 1 3/4" of width from the outside up a bit. How tall are the problem frogs? Just an inch or so? I don't think I've ever seen one.

Doesn't really help on the curves since the flanges on the inside will still hit the rail. What I have seen on a few, but not many, is that you skip the flanges on the center driver only, which gives you a bit more flexibility on curves. This one didn't do that, and I don't know if any of them did.

Someone else mentioned that one. I might, maybe, be up there later this summer. Not sure yet.

I'm afraid that you're probably right. None of the historic railroads I know of in the US or Canada use them. Only hope, I suspect, is maybe one of the longer runs on a British heritage line, or maybe a museum somewhere put one in just to show what they were.

I've heard about that one. All the stuff Brunel said it would do, it did do. Smoother ride. Faster. More stable. Also doubled the costs per mile of track, more than doubled the cost per mile for tunnels, bridges, etc. If he had been first, it probably would have become standard gauge, but didn't end up happening that way.

@@Industrial_Revolution No and the Russian gauge is only different because they wanted something that an invading enemy could not use.

Brunel's broad gauge was 7 feet and one-quarter inch.

I hadn't heard about that. Makes sense, though. Do you know how common those are? I've never noticed them, but to tell you the truth, I've also never looked for them.

@@Industrial_Revolution NOT BEING A MAINTENANCE OF WAY EMPLOYEE I AM NOT SURE!! THE STORY WAS ORIGINALLY READ BY MYSELF IN TRAINS MAGAZINE IN LATE 60s/VERY EARLY 70s! MY GUESS THE RAISED GUARDS ARE USED IN HEAVILY CURVED AREAS!

I didn't. I looked and found this... "The first rail line in Finland was opened in January 1862. As Finland was then the Grand Duchy of Finland, an autonomous state ruled in personal union by Imperial Russia where railways were also built to the (5 ft) broad track gauge of 1,524 mm (5 ft).[14] However the railway systems were not connected until the bridge over the River Neva was built in 1913.[15] Russian trains could not have run on Finnish tracks, because the Finnish loading gauge was narrower, until the connection was made and the Finnish structure gauge was widened. " So looks like same rail gauge, but narrower spaces for the locomotives and cars on those rails.

@@Industrial_Revolution Yeah, Finland and Russia used to have cross-border trains before CoViD, so the claim their networks are incompatible is bogus.

If that info I quoted is correct, the difference is not rail gauge, but maximum width of the locomotives and cars that'll fit through bridges, tunnels, etc. You could run trains from Finland into Russia, but not the other way. Really, though, even with different rail gauge, you can always run double-gauge where you need it.

It's just as tough if not worse having NATO next door

That's a LOT of drivers!

@@Industrial_Revolution absolutely a lot of drivers and pictures show just how insanely big the front cylinders were to utilize the low pressure steam as the cylinders shared steam like a triple expansion engine on old steam ships.

I've heard there were a handful of triple-expansion steam locomotives, but can't find details right now.

Well, they were pre-soviet. They were also 100% american-made and they never shipped to russia.

WHEN SOMEONE IS COMMENTING ON SOMETHING THEY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT!! LOLOL!!

Tell me you have no idea what you're talking about, without saying you have no idea what you're talking about.

Know when those ones were built? I'm wondering if they got them before the revolution.

@@Industrial_Revolution basically days before, it was during the Russian Empire's involvement during WW1

And during World War II, more of the same basic design (with some updates) were built in the U. S. for Lend-Lease and shipped to the USSR in American ships flying the Soviet flag.

The Russian decapod is actually a Russian design ordered and built in the U.S. The Russians agreed to U.S. measures to simplify production, the use of metric units would have been too cumbersome.

A week or so ago, I heard someone saying that their 5' gauge was preventing them from being able to take their trains into other countries to invade, as well.

@@Industrial_Revolution Works both ways.

I knew about that one, but only because I talked with someone at the Illinois Railway Museum who was trying to figure out how to re-gauge one to work on their standard gauge lines.

I think everyone used to have a lot of different gauges. The States had gauges all over the place until the end of the Civil War, when the federal government sorta mandated a standard, although even there, they still allowed a lot of narrow gauge to continue running. Some railroad museums even have double-gauged rails so they can run both standard and narrow gauge, and I saw pictures of a place in Europe that's running triple gauge, one standard and two, different narrow gauge lines on a piece of the same route. Outside of steam locomotive drivers, it doesn't seem like a huge problem to change gauges on individual locomotives or cars. The real challenge is that changing ALL of them, plus all the rails, switches, etc, while somehow still keeping everything moving, is a logistics nightmare. I may try to do a video on the changeover in the States if I can find enough good info on it. There were definitely some interesting solutions during the transition.

There's a railroad non-profit in town that, from their on-line info, looks like they're trying to grow their presence. It could happen in the future.

I didn't find pricing. Do you know how much railroads had to pay for these, vs a comparable locomotive?

Actually, the USRA got them and gave them out to railroads needing more locomotive power. They did this to help the war effort.

It's not a bad strategy when you really want to maintain the lake/reservoir above the dam. One thing I'm finding as I look at more dam removals, if you let people get creative, you can get some very different solutions, and a lot of them seem to work really well.

:) So you configured them to run ultra-narrow gauge?

@@Industrial_Revolution they’re actually HO scale models

Yep. Ultra-narrow, 16.5mm gauge. Too bad you can't run them in steam, though.

Thanks!

The wood may explain why they took out the old concrete at all.

i just looked it up and it looks like it is standard gauge there. it's possible some of it was laid slightly off, though. Curves can always squeal, especially with worn rail or wheels.

it was usual to slightly increase the gauge for curves, a little for broad curves, slightly more for tighter ones. This was especially good for the long rigid wheelbases of eight and ten coupled locomotives. The squealing might be because the track panels were built for straights, but were then moved, and bent to be used in a curve: the gauge would then be a bit tight.

That's a great museum. I've been there a couple times, but it's been quite a few years.

Still running like it just came out of the factory

Entire new wheels. Since they likely cast their own, it probably wasn't as big a deal as it would seem, and I assume the old ones just got melted back down and recast.

​@@Industrial_Revolution no they did not cast new wheels. The put wider steel tires on the existing cast iron wheels. If you check the back side, the tires hang off the back, and are really thick. Also some of them WERE sent to Russia, but as you say, the Bolshevic revolution stopped the order cold. There were about 1200 ordered in total and about 800 had been delivered. This locomotive worked very well and filled the Russian's needs well, so they ended up making thousands of more copies themselves. I have been ti Russia 26 years ago, and went to a railway museum where they had a Russian made copy of one of these on display.

@@pontiacguy5190indeed. There were a relatively small number sent to Finland, which also uses 5’ broad gauge, and more were ordered by the USSR during WWII as well.

I know that happened with the 1225 in Owasso (the inspiration for the Polar Express book and movie). A few other people have commented that they've had local park pieces restored and put back into service. I'm really glad to see that happening.

@@Industrial_Revolution Same.

Those are some great questions, and I have videos coming up on some of it. The huge wheels part, though, is easy. Most steam locomotives weren't geared (although some, like Shay locomotives, were). Your maximum speed was a function of how big your drivers were (see my how fast can a steam locomotive go video), although there's trade-offs between going fast and the ability to start with a heavy load. This meant that fast freight and passenger locomotives typically had bigger drivers, while heavy freight locomotives would usually have somewhat smaller ones. The boilers had to sit on top of the driver wheel axles (I have a video coming up looking at the bottom of a steam locomotive). Between coal and water, both of which were refilled along the way, almost aways from overhead towers, you couldn't really store the fuel and water underneath, and there's not enough room down there, anyway. Some of the tenders can be as big as the entire locomotive, with a majority of that space typically being for water. Some smaller locomotives, like saddleback or tank engines, actually did carry the fuel and water right on the locomotive. They had an upside-down U shaped water tank over the top of the boiler and carried coal in bunkers at the back of the footplate. Thomas the Tank Engine is one of these. They were small, and typically used for things like switchyard work or work moving things around a factory. My list of videos to make includes water sources, coaling towers, wheel configurations, and geared locomotive. Like I said, you asked a lot of great questions!

@@Industrial_Revolution ok but why are diesel engines wheels small with axles over them like 4 wheel or six wheel in groups in the front and in the back?

They're actually diesel-electrics, with the electric motors driving the wheels. The electric motors can turn much faster than you can run a steam engine. Due to the physics of moving steam around, how fast steam can move, and how fast it can expand and then leave cylinders, your steam efficiency starts to drop really fast after about 333 RPM, and there's a theoretical max speed of 555 RPM for steam engines. Running smaller wheels, steam trains would max out around 25 mph.

@@Industrial_Revolution why are the wheels smaller on a diesel vs a steamer though? I know it diesel electric but why are they grouped in axles like 4 wheel or 6 wheel?

Well smaller just gets them out of the way, if nothing else. The axle for the wheels defines how far down everything else can sit, so bigger wheels means you have to raise everything else up. Also, smaller wheels are less likely to spin and they can provide more torque, so more power to start up with a heavy load. Why in sets of 4 or 6? If you did a set of 2, it could more easily twist off the rails. You'll almost never see a single axle on a train, except occasionally the lead or trailing wheels on a steam locomotive. They pretty much always come in sets of 4. The other reason is that you need more drive wheels. Putting them in rigidly-locked sets means you can drive multiple wheels with a single drive system. That's why steam locomotives have the running gear connecting, usually, 2 or 3 wheels on each side, although I've seen up to 5 wheels on each side (today's video release, in fact). For diesel, it's cheaper and easier to have one, big electric motor driving 6 wheels, all geared together, than it is to have three motors each running 2 wheels. Why not run 20 wheels off one, even bigger motor? Since they have to be rigidly tied together, if you get too long, going around tighter curves becomes a problem. As for why you still need more wheels, and not just one, super-powerful set, think of the contact area between the wheel and the rail. It's extremely small, about the size of a dime. You can either add more weight on top of that tiny contact area, or add more contact area. Adding more drive wheels, while maintaining the same weight, causes less track and railbed damage, since you're distributing it more, and also provides better traction, since you have a larger surface area to grab onto. That help? Oh, and do keep asking questions on the videos. Some questions have already been turned into videos, or added to the list of videos I want to make. I know I've been learning a lot as I make these.

Nope. Afraid not. There's plenty that lasted more than a century, and they were often only replaced due to electricity being cheap than coal.

I have some video up around the falls, and those mills and power plant, too, but there's two issues. First, the information is... confusing. It seems there's not much great info that's not conflicting with other info. Second, the undergrowth was so dense I couldn't see much. I'll go back this fall/winter and get some video when I can hopefully figure out what's going on, and also get some good video to show off the site.

@@Industrial_Revolution thank you looking foward too the update video ,