Factors Affecting The Minimum Curve Radius
Minimum curve radii for railroads are governed by the speed operated and by the mechanical ability of the rolling stock to adjust to the curvature. In North America, equipment for unlimited interchange between railroad companies are built to accommodate 350-foot (106.7 m) radius (16 degrees 26 minutes) or sharper, but normally 410-foot (125.0 m) radius (14 degrees) is used as a minimum, as some freight cars are handled by special agreement between railroads that cannot take the sharper curvature. For handling of long freight trains, a minimum 717-foot (218.5 m) radius (8 degrees) is preferred.
The sharpest curves tend to be on the narrowest of narrow gauge railways, where almost everything is proportionately smaller.
Read more about this topic: Minimum Railway Curve Radius
Famous quotes containing the words factors, affecting, minimum and/or curve:
“The economic dependence of woman and her apparently indestructible illusion that marriage will release her from loneliness and work and worry are potent factors in immunizing her from common sense in dealing with men at work.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“There is a higher law affecting our relation to pines as well as to men. A pine cut down, a dead pine, is no more a pine than a dead human carcass is a man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“After decades of unappreciated drudgery, American women just don’t do housework any more—that is, beyond the minimum that is required in order to clear a path from the bedroom to the front door so they can get off to work in the mourning.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (20th century)
“The years-heired feature that can
In curve and voice and eye
Despise the human span
Of durance—that is I;
The eternal thing in man,
That heeds no call to die.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)