3 ft gauge railways

A bridge of the defunct National Railroad of Mexico in 1883
An electric tram on the Tranvía de Sóller on the Spanish island of Majorca

Three foot gauge railways have a track gauge of 3 ft (914 mm) or 1 yard. This gauge is a narrow gauge and is generally found throughout North, Central, and South America. In Ireland, many secondary and industrial lines were built to 3 ft gauge, and it is the dominant gauge on the Isle of Man, where it is known as the Manx Standard Gauge. Modern 3 ft gauge railways are most commonly found in isolated mountainous areas, on small islands, or in large-scale amusement parks and theme parks (see table below). This gauge is also popular in model railroading (particularly in G scale), and model prototypes of these railways have been made by several model train brands around the world, such as Accucraft Trains (USA), Aristo-Craft Trains (US), Bachmann Industries (Hong Kong), Delton Locomotive Works (US), LGB (Germany),[1] and PIKO (Germany).

Installations

Country/territory Railway
Australia
Belize
Brazil
Canada
Colombia
Cuba
  • Ferrocarril Recreacional[2] (located in Parque Lenin) (closed - park still operating)
El Salvador
France
Germany
  • Santa Fé Express (located in Fort Fun Abenteuerland) (operating)
  • Trams in Chemnitz (converted to 925 mm (3 ft 1332 in) gauge, then converted to standard gauge) (operating)
Guatemala
Guyana
Honduras
Hong Kong
Ireland
Iraq
  • Al Zawra’a Dream Park[3][4] (operating)
Isle of Man
Japan
Kuwait
Mexico
Nauru
New Caledonia
New Zealand
Peru
Spain

The Ferrocarril de Sóller and the Tranvía de Sóller are located on Majorca in the Balearic Islands. The other railways of the Majorca rail network were also 3 ft (914 mm) gauge, but with expansion and reconstruction of the network in the early 2000s, they were converted to 1,000 mm (3 ft 3 38 in) metre gauge.

United Kingdom
United States

See also

References

  1. 2006 LGB Catalog
  2. Steamlocomotive.info - Cuba
  3. Steamlocomotive.info - Al Zawra’a Dream Park
  4. "Al Zawra'a Dream Park - official website (in Arabic)". Archived from the original on 2014-02-05. Retrieved 2014-01-25.
  5. Surviving Steam Locomotives in Aguascalientes
  6. Parque Héroes Mexicanos - official website (in Spanish)
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.