[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Railway tracks on highway

Markus selfishseahorse at gmail.com
Sun Dec 9 21:30:26 UTC 2018


Thank you, Mateusz and Colin, i haven't thought of curve radii and signalling.

By the way, i deliberately didn't mention the Bordeaux system because
it's uncommon and not a metro (but some kind of tram).

Regards
Markus

On Sun, 9 Dec 2018 at 20:46, Mateusz Konieczny <matkoniecz at tutanota.com> wrote:
>
> In Kraków, Poland trams and train use the same gauge and in
> theory it is  possible to build vehicle that would travel both on
> tram tracks and railway tracks.
>
> But railway tracks are build to withstand significantly heavier
> vehicles and with massive differences in curve radius:
>
> railway curve with small radius:
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=50.0433&mlon=19.9617#map=15/50.0433/19.9617
>
> tram tracks curve with small radius:
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=50.0438&mlon=19.9471#map=15/50.0438/19.9471
>
> So I would expect a difference.
>
> BTW, first tram in Kraków had deliberately narrow gauge to make impossible
> to convert it into railway tracks through a city center.
>
> Dec 9, 2018, 5:37 PM by selfishseahorse at gmail.com:
>
> Hi!
>
> I'm still wondering if there is a technical difference between
> embedded tram, train and now metro rails (except for a third rail,
> which usually can't be embedded in a street). If the only difference
> are the vehicles that run on them, then it doesn't seem to be
> important to distinguish between embedded_rails=tram/railway/subway
> and embedded_rails=yes probably is enough information. (By the way,
> why did you leave out light_rail and narrow_gauge?)

On Sun, 9 Dec 2018 at 21:40, Colin Smale <colin.smale at xs4all.nl> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 9 December 2018 17:37:21 CET, Markus <selfishseahorse at gmail.com> wrote:
> >Hi!
> >
> >I'm still wondering if there is a technical difference between
> >embedded tram, train and now metro rails (except for a third rail,
> >which usually can't be embedded in a street).
>
> It can and is popular in France.. Check out APS (alimentation par sol).
>
> A major difference between heavy rail and trams is signaling. Rail systems are heavy on safety interlocks whereas trams basically rely on the driver as they have to interact with city traffic. Points (switches) for trams are controlled by the drivers on demand, whereas for trains they are set for centrally determined paths. I suspect that point motors for trams are happier at being forced open at trailing junctions as well. Big train point motors take a dim view of that.



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