International Railroad Discussion > Brazilian Broad Gauge

We got an order request for a handcar from a Brazilian Railroad.  Seemed like an easy sale as we have a car to sell them and we have done international shipping before.  Then the railroad told us, by the way we are broad gauge.  Not so easy now because we need to turn new axles and our former shop that made these has since sold their lathe that can do this and our lathes are not long enough. We are contemplating whether to take the project on because not only do we need to make longer axles, we need to modify the handcar frame design and build a new car that will probably never be built again.

How much broad gauge is in Brazil?

 

Todd Clark
Canyon Country, CA
Trainorders.com

Hi, broad gauge here is 1,600mm (5 ft 3 in). It's only 165 mm wider than the standard gauge. Are you sure you need to do a new frame for the cars? The standard gauge locomotives converyed to broad gauge looks pretty good on the wide trucks. I imagine the hand car too. I am trying to imagine which broad gauge company here coukd ask for hand cars. It is interesting, for sure.


Pedro

webmaster Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> We got an order request for a handcar from a
> Brazilian Railroad.  Seemed like an easy sale as
> we have a car to sell them and we have done
> international shipping before.  Then the railroad
> told us, by the way we are broad gauge.  Not so
> easy now because we need to turn new axles and our
> former shop that made these has since sold their
> lathe that can do this and our lathes are not long
> enough. We are contemplating whether to take the
> project on because not only do we need to make
> longer axles, we need to modify the handcar frame
> design and build a new car that will probably
> never be built again.
>
> How much broad gauge is in Brazil?
>
>  

Posted from Android

Pedro Rezende
Vespasiano MG,
https://youtube.com/c/minasgeraisrailways1



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/22 15:35 by pedrop.

6 and 1/2 inches is quite a bit of length.

It is a pretty big deal to gauge a handcar.  For starters the brakes mount to the frame so if the car is simply regauged the brakes won't fit.   The request came in through an engineering company and we are told it is for corporate relations.  We are going to pass because we don't have the time right now to build out a car.  A typical handcar takes about 300 hours to build, this one would take longer as we need to modify our plans. We have some priority projects in our shop that we don't want to delay.



 

Todd Clark
Canyon Country, CA
Trainorders.com