Metre gauge
The term refers to meter gauge in iron and trams a variant of the narrow gauge with a gauge of one thousand millimeters, ie one meter. With the exception of Oceania and North America, one finds that gauge on all continents, often as a gauge of the main tracks.
Use
In Europe today has Spain 's largest meter gauge network, especially in northern Spain situated - see feve. Also on the Peloponnesus in Greece and in southern Italy there are extensive meter gauge networks, and by the end of the 1940s it was also available in France and northern Italy.
In Germany, the meter gauge was first used in the Feldabahn and other branch lines as the Chiemsee Bahn and trams. The largest contiguous meter gauge networks in Germany operate the Rhein -Neckar Transport Company ( RNV ) between the cities of Heidelberg, Mannheim and Ludwigshafen am Rhein with the Upper Rhine Railway (OEG ) and the Rhein- Haardt Bahn ( RHB ) and the Harz narrow gauge railways, the network also with the tram Nordhausen is connected.
Another large and coherent meter gauge network to be found in Switzerland. The mountain routes on which also operate long-distance trains such as the Glacier Express are operated inter alia on the Rhaetian Railway ( RhB). In this network, there is also the longest meter gauge tunnel in the world, the Vereinatunnel. In contrast, the Bosnian gauge with 760 millimeters is predominant in Austria. Here there are only a few short tram- like narrow gauge local railways, such as the Stubai Valley Train, Innsbruck central mountain railway, which Attergaubahn and Traunseebahn. In Gmunden and Innsbruck operate narrow gauge trams.
A part of the Indian railway network is done in meters track. Since 1992, some of these routes will be converted to the local broad gauge. The Thai state railway operates a rail network of more than 4000 kilometers in yards trail emanating radially from Bangkok. In Vietnam, the railway is mainly driven by the meter gauge railway, such as the more than 1,700 -mile main route from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon ) and the Yunnan railway from Haiphong through Hanoi to the Chinese border at Loa Cai and from there to Kunming with a total of 855 km.
Other major meter gauge networks are available in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda ( see also Uganda -Bahn ). There also drove the largest meter gauge locomotive in the world, the class 59 of the former East African Railways, a Garratt articulated locomotive. The railway network of the Tunisian State Railways SNCFT consists also largely of meter gauge lines. In Tunisia, located with the railway line Tunis - Sfax also the fastest meter gauge line in the world. It forms the main axis in the north - south traffic. In South America, there is an extensive narrow gauge network in Brazil.
As with many narrow gauge railways are on meter gauge tracks found lower technical requirements than standard gauge. With smaller curve radii built in meter gauge railway lines can be better adapted to the terrain course. Bridges and tunnels can be correspondingly smaller dimensions to the mostly smaller control cross section. On the other hand, the smoothness and stability is lower, so that the meter gauge is bad for high-speed lines.
Footnotes
- Gauge
- 1000 mm gauge