Talk:Coaches of the Great Western Railway

A fact from Coaches of the Great Western Railway appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 13 February 2009, and was viewed approximately 1,679 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that coaches of the Great Western Railway were built up to 13 feet (4 m) longer than most other British railway carriages of the time?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2009/February.

Wikipedia

Trains: in UK / Passenger trains Mid‑importance

Trains Portal

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Trains, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to rail transport on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. See also: WikiProject Trains to do list and the Trains Portal.TrainsWikipedia:WikiProject TrainsTemplate:WikiProject Trainsrail transport articles

Mid

This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Associated projects or task forces:
/
	This article is supported by WikiProject UK Railways (assessed as Mid-importance).
	This article is supported by the Passenger trains task force.

Loading Gauge[edit]

> The GWR always had an in-built loading gauge advantage over the other British railways, > in that its entire infrastructure was originally designed for broad gauge dimensions.

This is simply not true. At least half of the GWR was never broad gauge, and the broad gauge clearances between rail and platform/structures were not especially generous. Some lines had a significantly more generous loading gauge than the GWR did. The Great Northern and Midland, amongst others had greater height in the centre of the vehicle, and the LBSCR greater height at the eaves. But at the grouping each of the big 4 was forced to adopt a lowest common denominator loading gauge, and that for the GWR was a little wider and higher than that for LMS, LNER and Southern. As another example the Caledonian Railway had a steam locomotive design in preparation at the time of the grouping which featured 21" diameter outside cylinders, whereas 19" was the largest size on the GWR (Cox, Chronicles of Steam) 212.159.44.170 (talk) 16:40, 22 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What is true to say is that after the broad gauge was gone the GWR was able to rework those main lines that had been broad gauge to give a slightly wider, but not especially higher loading gauge *above* platform height, and this did permit longer and wider carriages on those lines only. There were a complex set of restrictions which governed which lines various longer and or wider Great Western carriages were allowed to transit, including lines belonging to other companies. 212.159.44.170 (talk) 16:19, 19 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]