1.
Reporting mark
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A reporting mark is an alphabetic code of one to four letters used to identify owners or lessees of rolling stock and other equipment used on certain railroad networks. In North America the mark, which consists of an code of one to four letters, is stenciled on each piece of equipment. The Association of American Railroads assigns marks to all carriers, under authority granted by the U. S, surface Transportation Board, Transport Canada, and Mexican Government. Under current practice, the first letter must match the initial letter of the railroad name, as it also acts as a Standard Carrier Alpha Code, the reporting mark cannot conflict with codes in use by other nonrail carriers. In another example, the mark for state-funded Amtrak services in California is CDTX because the state transportation agency owns the equipment used in these services. This is why the reporting mark for CSX Transportation, which is a railroad, is CSXT instead of CSX. This often resulted in five-letter reporting marks, an option not otherwise allowed by the AAR, the standard ISO6346 covers identifiers for intermodal containers. When the owner of a mark is taken over by another company. For example, when the Union Pacific Railroad acquired the Chicago and North Western Railway in the 1990s, some companies own several marks that are used to identify different classes of cars, such as boxcars or gondolas. If the acquiring company discontinues the name or mark of the acquired company, occasionally, long-disused marks are suddenly revived by the companies which now own them. For example, in recent years, the Union Pacific Railroad has begun to use the mark CMO on newly built covered hoppers, gondolas, CMO originally belonged to a predecessor of the CNW, which passed it on to them, from which the UP inherited it. Some of these still retain their temporary NYC marks. Because of its size, this list has been split into subpages based on the first letter of the reporting mark, railinc, a subsidiary of the AAR, maintains the active reporting marks for the North American rail industry. Railinc offers a free online look-up of reporting marks and other industry reference files through the Railincs Freight Rail 411 website, a railway vehicle must be registered in a national vehicle register using a 12-digit number derived from the old UIC system of vehicle numbering. The number contains the country in the third and fourth digit. The VKM must not contain special signs or digits, the VKM is preceded by the code for the country, where the vehicle is registered and a hyphen. Some examples, When a vehicle is sold it does not normally be transferred to another register, the Czech railways bought large numbers of coaches from ÖBB. The number remained the same but the VKM changed from A-ÖBB to A-ČD, the UIC introduced a uniform numbering system for their members based on a 12-digit number, largely known as UIC number
2.
Chattanooga, Tennessee
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Chattanooga is a city in the U. S. state of Tennessee, with a population of 176,588 in 2015. The fourth-largest Tennessee city, it is the seat of Hamilton County, located in southeastern Tennessee in East Tennessee, on the Tennessee River, served by multiple railroads and Interstate highways, Chattanooga is a transit hub. The city, with elevation of approximately 680 feet, lies at the transition between the ridge-and-valley portion of the Appalachian Mountains and the Cumberland Plateau. Surrounded by mountains and ridges, the nickname for Chattanooga is the Scenic City. Unofficial nicknames include River City, Chatt, Nooga, Chattown, Chattanooga is internationally known for the 1941 song Chattanooga Choo Choo by Glenn Miller and his orchestra. Chattanooga is home to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Chattanooga State Community College, the city has its own typeface, Chatype, which was launched in August 2012. The first inhabitants of the Chattanooga area were Native Americans, sites dating back to the Upper Paleolithic period showed continuous occupation through the Archaic, Woodland, Mississippian/Muskogean/Yuchi, and Cherokee. The Chickamauga Mound near the mouth of the Chickamauga Creek is the oldest remaining visible art in Chattanooga, the Citico town and mound site was the most significant Mississippian/Muscogee landmark in Chattanooga up to 1915. The first part of the name Chattanooga derives from the Muskogean word cvto /chắtȯ/ – rock, the latter may be derived from a regional suffix -nuga meaning dwelling or dwelling place. In 1816 John Ross, who later became Principal Chief, established Rosss Landing, located along what is now Broad Street, it became one of the centers of Cherokee Nation settlement, which also extended into Georgia and Alabama. Their journey west became known as the Trail of Tears for their exile, the US Army used Rosss Landing as the site of one of three large internment camps, or emigration depots, where Native Americans were held prior to the journey on the Trail of Tears. One of the internment camps was located in Fort Payne, Alabama, in 1839, the community of Rosss Landing incorporated as the city of Chattanooga. The city grew quickly, initially benefiting from a location well-suited for river commerce, with the arrival of the railroad in 1850, Chattanooga became a boom town. During the American Civil War, Chattanooga was a center of battle, during the Chickamauga Campaign, Union artillery bombarded Chattanooga as a diversion and occupied it on September 9,1863. Following the Battle of Chickamauga, the defeated Union Army retreated to safety in Chattanooga, the next day, the Battle of Lookout Mountain was fought, driving the Confederates off the mountain. On November 25, Grants army routed the Confederates in the Battle of Missionary Ridge and these battles were followed the next spring by the Atlanta Campaign, beginning just over the nearby state line in Georgia and moving southeastward. After the war ended, the city became a railroad hub and industrial. The largest flood in Chattanoogas history occurred in 1867, before the Tennessee Valley Authority system was created in 1933 by Congress, the flood crested at 58 feet and completely inundated the city
3.
Meridian, Mississippi
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Meridian is the sixth largest city in the state of Mississippi, United States. It is the county seat of Lauderdale County and the city of the Meridian. Along major highways, the city is 93 mi east of Jackson, Mississippi,154 mi west of Birmingham, Alabama,202 mi northeast of New Orleans, Louisiana, and 231 mi southeast of Memphis, Tennessee. During the American Civil War, General William Tecumseh Sherman burned much of the city to the ground in the Battle of Meridian. Union Station, built in 1906, is now a center, giving access to the Meridian Transit System, Greyhound Buses. Although the economy slowed with the decline of the industry, the city has diversified, with healthcare, military. The area is served by two military facilities, Naval Air Station Meridian and Key Field, which provide over 4,000 jobs, NAS Meridian is home to the Regional Counter-Drug Training Academy and the first local Department of Homeland Security in the state. Key Field is named after brothers Fred and Al Key, who set an endurance flight record in 1935. The field is now home to the 186th Air Refueling Wing of the Air National Guard, rush Foundation Hospital is the largest non-military employer in the region, employing 2,610 people. Among the citys many arts organizations and historic buildings are the Riley Center, the Meridian Museum of Art, Meridian Little Theatre, Meridian was home to two Carnegie libraries, one for whites and one for African Americans. The Carnegie Branch Library, now demolished, was one of a number of Carnegie libraries built for blacks in the Southern United States during the segregation era, the city has been selected as the future location of the Mississippi Arts and Entertainment Center. Jimmie Rodgers, the Father of Country Music, was born in Meridian, Highland Park houses a museum which displays memorabilia of his life and career, as well as railroad equipment from the steam-engine era. The park is home to the Highland Park Dentzel Carousel. It is the worlds only two-row stationary Dentzel menagerie in existence, after the treaty was ratified, European-American settlers began to move into the area. Most of McLemores land was bought in 1853 by Lewis A. Ragsdale, John T. Ball, a merchant from Kemper County, bought the remaining 80 acres. Ragsdale and Ball, now known as the founders of the city, there was much competition over the proposed name of the settlement. Ball erected a house on the Mobile and Ohio Railroad – the sign on which would alternate between Meridian and Sowashee each day. Eventually the continued development of the led to an influx of railroad workers who overruled the others in the city
4.
New Orleans
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New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The population of the city was 343,829 as of the 2010 U. S. Census, the New Orleans metropolitan area had a population of 1,167,764 in 2010 and was the 46th largest in the United States. The New Orleans–Metairie–Bogalusa Combined Statistical Area, a trading area, had a 2010 population of 1,452,502. The city is named after the Duke of Orleans, who reigned as Regent for Louis XV from 1715 to 1723, as it was established by French colonists and it is well known for its distinct French and Spanish Creole architecture, as well as its cross-cultural and multilingual heritage. New Orleans is also famous for its cuisine, music, and its celebrations and festivals, most notably Mardi Gras. The city is referred to as the most unique in the United States. New Orleans is located in southeastern Louisiana, straddling the Mississippi River, the city and Orleans Parish are coterminous. The city and parish are bounded by the parishes of St. Tammany to the north, St. Bernard to the east, Plaquemines to the south, and Jefferson to the south and west. Lake Pontchartrain, part of which is included in the city limits, lies to the north, before Hurricane Katrina, Orleans Parish was the most populous parish in Louisiana. As of 2015, it ranks third in population, trailing neighboring Jefferson Parish, La Nouvelle-Orléans was founded May 7,1718, by the French Mississippi Company, under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, on land inhabited by the Chitimacha. It was named for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, who was Regent of the Kingdom of France at the time and his title came from the French city of Orléans. The French colony was ceded to the Spanish Empire in the Treaty of Paris, during the American Revolutionary War, New Orleans was an important port for smuggling aid to the rebels, transporting military equipment and supplies up the Mississippi River. Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid, Count of Gálvez successfully launched a campaign against the British from the city in 1779. New Orleans remained under Spanish control until 1803, when it reverted briefly to French oversight, nearly all of the surviving 18th-century architecture of the Vieux Carré dates from the Spanish period, the most notable exception being the Old Ursuline Convent. Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, thereafter, the city grew rapidly with influxes of Americans, French, Creoles, and Africans. Later immigrants were Irish, Germans, and Italians, Major commodity crops of sugar and cotton were cultivated with slave labor on large plantations outside the city. The Haitian Revolution ended in 1804 and established the republic in the Western Hemisphere. It had occurred several years in what was then the French colony of Saint-Domingue
5.
Southern Railway (U.S.)
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The Southern Railway was a US class 1 railroad that was based in the Southern United States. It was the product of nearly 150 predecessor lines that were combined, reorganized and recombined beginning in the 1830s, at the end of 1970 Southern operated 6,026 miles of railroad, not including its Class I subsidiaries AGS CofG S&A CNOTP GS&F and twelve Class II subsidiaries. The Norfolk Southern Corporation was created in response to the creation of the CSX Corporation, the Southern Railway was renamed Norfolk Southern Railway in 1990 and continued under that name ever since. Seven years later in 1997 the railroad absorbed the Norfolk and Western Railway, ending the Norfolk, by 1833, its 136-mile line to Hamburg, South Carolina, was the longest in the world. As railroad fever struck other Southern states, networks gradually spread across the South, by 1857 the Memphis and Charleston Railroad was completed to link Charleston, South Carolina, and Memphis, Tennessee, but rail expansion in the South was halted with the start of the Civil War. The Chickamauga Campaign for Chattanooga, Tennessee was also motivated by the importance of its connections to the Memphis and Charleston. Known as the First Railroad War, the Civil War left the Souths railroads, most of the railroads, however, were repaired, reorganized and operated again. In the area along the Ohio River and Mississippi River, construction of new railroads continued throughout Reconstruction, Southern Railway came into existence in 1894 through the combination of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, the Richmond and Danville system and the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad. The company owned two-thirds of the 4,400 miles of line it operated, Southern also controlled the Alabama Great Southern and the Georgia Southern and Florida, which operated separately, and it had an interest in the Central of Georgia. Additionally, the Southern Railway also agreed to lease the North Carolina Railroad Company, Southerns first president, Samuel Spencer, drew more lines into Southerns core system. During his 12-year term, the railway built new shops at Spencer, North Carolina, Knoxville, Tennessee, and Atlanta, Georgia, built and upgraded tracks, and purchased more equipment. He moved the companys service away from a dependence on tobacco and cotton and centered its efforts on diversifying traffic. Spencer was killed in a wreck in 1906. The Central of Georgia became part of the system in 1963, despite these small acquisitions, the Southern disdained the merger trend when it swept the railroad industry in the 1960s, choosing to remain a regional carrier. In 1978 President L. Stanley Crane said the refusal to add routes through merger was a mistake, especially the decision not to add a connecting route to Chicago. A decade later Crane tried to rectify the situation by merging with the Illinois Central Railroad. C. C. s approval of the Seaboard Coast Line - Chessie System merger in 1979. While the request was supported by the I. C. C. s Enforcement Bureau, the Southern Railway was renamed Norfolk Southern Railway in 1990 and absorbed the Norfolk and Western Railway into its system in 1997. The railroad then acquired more than half of Conrail in 1999, Southern and its predecessors were responsible for many firsts in the industry
6.
Track gauge
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In rail transport, track gauge is the spacing of the rails on a railway track and is measured between the inner faces of the load-bearing rails. All vehicles on a network must have running gear that is compatible with the track gauge, as the dominant parameter determining interoperability, it is still frequently used as a descriptor of a route or network. There is a distinction between the gauge and actual gauge at some locality, due to divergence of track components from the nominal. Railway engineers use a device, like a caliper, to measure the actual gauge, the nominal track gauge is the distance between the inner faces of the rails. In current practice, it is specified at a distance below the rail head as the inner faces of the rail head are not necessarily vertical. In some cases in the earliest days of railways, the company saw itself as an infrastructure provider only. Colloquially the wagons might be referred to as four-foot gauge wagons, say and this nominal value does not equate to the flange spacing, as some freedom is allowed for. An infrastructure manager might specify new or replacement track components at a variation from the nominal gauge for pragmatic reasons. Track is defined in old Imperial units or in universally accepted metric units or SI units, Imperial units were established in United Kingdom by The Weights and Measures Act of 1824. In addition, there are constraints, such as the load-carrying capacity of axles. Narrow gauge railways usually cost less to build because they are lighter in construction, using smaller cars and locomotives, as well as smaller bridges, smaller tunnels. Narrow gauge is often used in mountainous terrain, where the savings in civil engineering work can be substantial. Broader gauge railways are generally expensive to build and require wider curves. There is no single perfect gauge, because different environments and economic considerations come into play, a narrow gauge is superior if ones main considerations are economy and tight curvature. For direct, unimpeded routes with high traffic, a broad gauge may be preferable, the Standard, Russian, and 46 gauges are designed to strike a reasonable balance between these factors. In addition to the general trade-off, another important factor is standardization, once a standard has been chosen, and equipment, infrastructure, and training calibrated to that standard, conversion becomes difficult and expensive. This also makes it easier to adopt an existing standard than to invent a new one and this is true of many technologies, including railroad gauges. The reduced cost, greater efficiency, and greater economic opportunity offered by the use of a common standard explains why a number of gauges predominate worldwide
7.
Standard gauge
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The standard gauge is a widely used railway track gauge. Approximately 55% of the lines in the world are this gauge, all high-speed rail lines, except those in Russia, Uzbekistan, and Finland, are standard gauge. The distance between the edges of the rails is defined to be 1435 mm except in the United States. It is also called the UIC gauge or UIC track gauge, as railways developed and expanded, one of the key issues was the track gauge to be used. The result was the adoption throughout a large part of the world of a gauge of 1435 mm. In North East England, some lines in colliery areas were 4 ft 8 in. All these lines had been widened to standard gauge by 1846, parts of the United States, mainly in the Northeast, adopted the same gauge, because some early trains were purchased from Britain. However, until well into the half of the 19th century, Britain. The American gauges converged as the advantages of equipment interchange became increasingly apparent, notably, all the 5 ft broad gauge track in the South was converted to standard gauge over the course of two days beginning on 31 May 1886. See Track gauge in the United States, snopes categorized this legend as false, but commented that. It is perhaps more fairly labelled as True, but for trivial, the historical tendency to place the wheels of horse-drawn vehicles approximately 5 feet apart probably derives from the width needed to fit a carthorse in between the shafts. Others were 4 ft 4 in or 4 ft 7 1⁄2 in, the English railway pioneer George Stephenson spent much of his early engineering career working for the coal mines of County Durham. He favoured 4 ft 8 in for wagonways in Northumberland and Durham, the Hetton and Springwell wagonways also used this gauge. Stephensons Stockton and Darlington railway was primarily to transport coal from mines near Shildon to the port at Stockton-on-Tees. The initial gauge of 4 ft 8 in was set to accommodate the existing gauge of hundreds of horse-drawn chaldron wagons that were already in use on the wagonways in the mines. The railway used this gauge for 15 years before a change was made to 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in gauge, George Stephenson used the 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in gauge for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, authorised in 1826 and opened 30 September 1830. The success of this led to Stephenson and his son Robert being employed to engineer several other larger railway projects. Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway, authorised 1824 and opened 1825, used 4 ft 6 in, Dundee and Newtyle Railway, authorised 1829 and opened 1831, used 4 ft 6 1⁄2 in
8.
5 ft and 1520 mm gauge railways
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Railways with a railway track gauge of 5 ft/1,524 mm were first constructed in the United Kingdom and the United States. This gauge is commonly called Russian gauge because this gauge was later chosen as the common track gauge for the Russian Empire. The gauge was redefined by Russian Railways to be 1520 mm, the primary region where Russian gauge is used is the former Soviet Union, Mongolia and Finland, with about 225,000 km of track. Russian gauge is the second most common gauge in the world, in 1748, the Wylam waggonway was built to a 5 ft gauge for the shipment of coal from Wylam to Lemington down the River Tyne. In 1839, the Eastern Counties Railway was constructed, and in 1840, in 1844, both lines were converted to 1,435 mm standard gauge. In 1903, the East Hill Cliff Railway, a funicular, was opened. In 1827, Horatio Allen, the engineer of the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company, prescribed the usage of 5 ft gauge. The presence of several distinct gauges was a disadvantage to the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. In 1886, when around 11,500 miles of 5 ft gauge track existed in the United States, while of almost no practical importance the railway did demonstrate that this gauge was viable. The second railway in the Russian Empire was the Warsaw–Vienna railway which was built to 1,435 mm, for the building of Russias first major railway, the Moscow – Saint Petersburg Railway, engineer Pavel Melnikov hired as consultant George Washington Whistler, a prominent American railway engineer. Melnikov, of the Construction Commission overseeing the railway, recommended 6 ft following the example of the first railway and his study of US Railways. Following a report sent by Whistler the head of the Main Administration of Transport and Buildings recommended 5 ft and it was approved for the railway by Tsar Nicholas I on February 14,1843. The next lines built were also approved with this gauge but it was not until March 1860 that a Government decree stated all major railways in Russia would be 5 ft gauge. It is widely and incorrectly believed that Imperial Russia chose a gauge broader than standard gauge for military reasons, in 1841 a Russian army engineer wrote a paper stating that such a danger did not exist since railways could be made dysfunctional by retreating forces. Finally for the Moscow - Saint Petersburg Railway, which became the benchmark, despite this the difference in gauge did play a role in hindering invading armies, especially in World War II, it was just not selected with that in mind. The 5-foot gauge became the standard in the whole Russian Empire and that includes the Baltic states, Ukraine, Belarus, the Caucasian and Central Asian republics, Finland, and in the once Soviet-influenced Mongolia. This formed a break of gauge between Changchun and Kuancheng, until the rest of the former Chinese Eastern Railway was converted to standard gauge, unlike in South Manchuria, the Soviet Unions reconquest of southern Sakhalin from Japan did not result in regauging of the railway system. Southern Sakhalin has continued with the original Japanese 1,067 mm gauge simultaneously with the Russian gauge railway, constructed in the northern part of the island in 1930-1932
9.
Track gauge conversion
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In rail transport, gauge conversion is the process of converting a railway from one rail gauge to another, through the alteration of the railway tracks. An alternative to gauge conversion is dual gauge track, or gauge conversion of the vehicles themselves. Rails may be too light for the loads imposed by broader-gauge railcars, in some cases, gauge-convertible sleepers are installed before the conversion of the track itself. The sleepers must be enough to take the wider of the two gauges, and must be able to accommodate the fittings for both the existing and the new gauges. In cases where the difference between the two gauges is small, such as 1,000 mm and 1,067 mm track, or 1,435 mm and 1,524 mm track, in those cases, gauntlet track is required. Timber sleepers are always gauge convertible, provided that they are long enough, if the new gauge is wider than the old, a shorter sleeper than would normally be used can be tolerated, provided it still allows for secure fastening of the wider track. Concrete sleepers cannot be converted as an afterthought, but must have the future fittings cast in place when manufactured, steel sleepers should have the extra fitting incorporated when manufactured, though it is theoretically possible to drill or weld new fittings to the sleeper after installation. A special gauge-convertible sleeper, with a chair for the Pandrol clip. In June 2008, the South Australian government announced that by 2012 the Adelaide metropolitan network would be converted from 1,600 mm broad gauge to standard gauge, consequently, broad-gauge timber sleepers are progressively being replaced with gauge-convertible concrete sleepers on the metropolitan rail network. As of 2016, however, gauge conversion had not commenced, narrow-gauge railways often have a significantly smaller structure gauge, and therefore the rolling stock used has a smaller loading gauge in both height and width. Conversion to a track gauge will often require enlargement of the structure gauge on bridges, under road overpasses. Embankments and cuts could need widening as well, the minimum curve radius of narrow-gauge railways is often less than on tracks with a wider gauge, so route deviations might be required to allow the radius of curves to be increased. Track centres at stations with multiple tracks may also have to be increased, in this instance, the loading gauge of the broad gauge and standard gauge lines are essentially the same. Where vehicles cross a change of gauge, they must either be equipped for a change of bogie or have adjustable gauge axles. For example passenger trains crossing between the 1,435 mm system in France and the 1,668 mm in Spain pass through an installation which adjusts their variable gauge axles. This temporary alteration to allow through working is generally referred to as gauge change, in the event, few have been so converted, but one such is Victorian Railways R class R766. Because boilers and fireboxes are in the way locomotives can be converted only to a wider gauge, about 1860, the Bristol and Exeter Railway converted five 1,435 mm gauge locomotives to 7 ft gauge, and later converted them back again. In the 19th century, in the US, some broad 1,524 mm gauge locomotives were designed for conversion to 1,435 mm gauge
