Can you build train tracks out of Wood? - Invercargill Wooden Railway

In today's video, we take a look at what was meant to be a short video, but honestly this railway was such a fascinating failure I had to keep going
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[@TrainFactGuy]

I love New Zealand and all, but my god are the names of so many places hard to pronounce

[@Konev]

Other than Wakatipu and Makarewa, all the other names are english/scottish so your pronunciation is ok. Its more we dont drop our jaw for the e.

[@AndrewMcColl]

You came close with "Bluff". It looks simple, but the correct pronunciation is closer to "Blue-f". ;)

[@AlasdairMathieson]

You probably(possibly) mispronounced Menzies. It'd be more like Mingus (like the old Lib Dem leader), the z is actually a yogh

[@Eevee007King]

If you want idea for a video here we go you could do the fell engine in New Zealand it's an incline engine with a history about it.

[@toyotaprius79]

A Brit bemoans over the difficulty to pronounce indigenous place names of far away lands... 🤦

[@namenamename390]

Calling a railway in one of the southernmost inhabitable places on earth the "Great Northern Railway" is certainly a fascinating move

[@laurencefraser]

Given the other names for varous routes in New Zealand, the 'great' part is highly questionable, but the 'northern' part is almost certainly because, well, it went north From the most significant place it stopped at. There's a tendency for roads and such in NZ, or at least the south island, to be named for whatever place is at the less significant end of them (on the basis that if you're going the other way you have rather less opportunities to pick the wrong one, I guess) so if it was going from a locally significant town to "I don't know exactly how far we'll eventually get yet, but north!", then 'northern' makes some sense. I mean, the two main roads out of Christchurch are "The Main North Road" and "The Main South Road"... and Christchurch is in the centre of the east coast of the South Island (and the largest city on the island... and I think the second(?) largest in the country). Well, admittedly, the section immediately outside of the city to the north has been superseded by a motorway, but they join back up further out.

[@uncle7162]

New Zealand’s pretty bloody habitable they don’t even have snakes. Compared to where I’m from Mackay Central Queensland. It’s paradise

[@namenamename390]

@@uncle7162 you briefly made me question my entire existence, but after looking it up, I can say that "inhabitable" is not the opposite of "habitable". If it's possible to inhabit a place (so you can live there), it's inhabitable.

[@lukechristmas3951]

I agree and I live in the Northern United States where the Great Northern Railway (the American one,) had a terminus near my hometown. So hearing about this one is quite a surprise.

[@matsv201]

You missunderstood. All great railways north of here

[@tardifan]

I can't be the only one who sees the brilliant irony of the wooden railway being brought down by a Mrs *STEEL* 😂

[@jklmnopski7421]

Quite iron-ic indeed.

[@Razer_-fe9mo]

​@@jklmnopski7421Nice 😂

[@Geometry_Dash_Background]

​@@jklmnopski7421what a golden joke

[@nielsleenknegt5839]

Can you...? - Yes. Will it work? - Whell...

[@gravityisaconspiracy5995]

I'm from the South Island of NZ and I can tell you, they had to get very innovative for Western and far-south developments. Unfortunately, most of our industrialial towns and travel routes were not preserved, with our ghost towns being absorbed back into the bush. I find not much information is easily accessible, so I'm very impressed by the depth of your NZ rail videos. All praises! And thank you.

[@scootergrant8683]

Doc has a some impressive details on places like Macetown but it takes plenty of digging.

[@lyndonchow8961]

As a New Zealand rail historian, there was a debate on Invercargill's (8th August) and Christchurch's (December 1st) having the first railway in New Zealand in 1863. (Nelson, on the other hands was said to have the first railway on the Don Mountain Railway (1862-1901) in 1862, just one year before the first official railway came to NZ.) Invercargill finally changed their railway from wooden rail to steel rail in 1867 from Bluff to Invercargill.

[@johnd8892]

Pronunciation at 2:09 for Ballarat and Geelong Railway spot on. Well done. Interesting story.

[@sonicfan117dash2]

“Sometimes the cheaper option will end up more expensive than you anticipated.” Talk about irony!

[@harrisonallen651]

Shoutout to the kiwis for making a real life Thomas Wooden Railway a reality

[@yeoldeseawitch]

7:57 that sounds like an ending to one of top gear's car vs public transit raced lmao

[@cricry]

Really does

[@munkysquidhybrid]

Lady Barkley actually ended her life at a sawmill in Central Southland. The Cramptons were sold and exported back to Australia, but the ship sank off the West Coast, taking the locos to the sea floor with it.

[@Dat-Mudkip]

The United States tried a similar idea with strap-iron rails. In the mid-18th century, somebody decided to try and increase the lifespan of wooden rails by introducing the concept of strapping a thin layer of iron over the wooden tracks. Being served by horses, this proved to be quite the benefit. It was not so beneficial when the iron horse began to show up. A little context might be needed. When the railroads began their big expansion in the 19th century, the United States was rather notorious for being... shall we say, _careless_ with the way they handled things. Track was laid out quickly and often unevenly, and derailments were very common. Funny thing was that trains ran so slowly, it often was seen by passengers as little more than an inconvenience, even if they had to physically get off the train and assist putting it back on to the tracks. (Some even saw it as "part of the experience".) As far as the companies were concerned, they needed to lay out the tracks as fast as they could before a competitor did it first, so the fact safety wasn't a big concern by passengers meant that the railroads would take full advantage of that. So with that in mind, a lot of railroads decided to go cheap wherever they could. Some decided to use strap iron rails as a means to save money and time. This was all well and good, provided maintenance was thorough. But there was a major drawback that soon became apparent. As train wheels ran over these straps of iron, the action would often cause the strip to roll-form. The faster and heavier a set of wheels ran over the iron, the more pronounced this effect. This results in the ends of each strap curling. Eventually, these ends of the straps (known as snake heads) would get just slightly too high, and an approaching wheel would kick it up through the wooden carriage/freight car, often leading to derailments, serious injury, and even death. Eventually, it was found that any money saved by using strap iron was only short term. Even if you ignore the accidents, maintenance alone on these tracks meant that you would lose money when compared to using fully iron rails in the long run. Between this and improvements in casting iron, strap iron rails soon became obsolete.

[@nostalgiccameralife]

I may provide some additional context here. The term "strap rail" is misleading, as well it is a term which was not in use when these roads were built. The "strap" was wrought iron bar, usually about 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick. While cost was a major consideration, most of these roads were not cheap to build, and it is a common misconception that they were poorly laid. Indeed these earliest roads laid down in the 1830s often cost far more per mile than those built decades later. But to the point: wrought iron was extremely expensive in the U.S. during the 1830s and 1840s, and there were no mills in the states which would roll it into rails, so if any quantity was needed it necessarily had to be imported. And there was a tariff on imported iron, so again advisable to limit as much as possible the amount of iron bar used. When a lot of these lines were being planned out (some as far back as the 1820s) the form of rail, the material to make it out of, etc. was not a settled question. The experts in England were experimenting with cast iron rails, wood rails, fish-belly rails, and so on. The "strap rail" was in most respects the form which gave the most advantages with the least drawbacks. For example: The Philadelphia Norristown & Germantown RR was originally built with all-iron parallel rail supported by cast iron rail chairs (at the time, the latest and greatest in England), at great expense (being one of the most expensive lines, per mile, ever constructed in the U.S. at the time). After being in operation for a few seasons it was found the iron rail, expanding in summer, and shrinking in winter, worked loose. In summer the expansion would cause the cast iron rail chairs to crack, in winter it would shrink and rattle loose in the chairs. They ended up replacing it with "strap rail" by 1837, which did not suffer so much from extreme temperature changes. The problem of snakeheads is mostly legend. There are only a handful of recorded instances of such a thing happening (probably less than a dozen) over the entire history of American railroading. Even back then roads hired section gangs who would walk the route every morning to inspect the track, and loose iron would've been hammered back into place. Derailments often happened, but for other reasons. Flange design was not well understood in the 1830s, and cross ties were often spaced too far apart (four to six feet center to center being common) to keep the rail gauge in check. The earliest lines, laid on stone blocks (as was the style in England at the time) sometimes had a wooden cross tie placed every 20 or so feet to keep the gauge...

[@Dat-Mudkip]

@@nostalgiccameralife Badly laid track was far from the only reason trains came off the track. Everything from misunderstandings of how physics worked and lack of standardization to faulty designs and cut corners contributed to derailments. While incidents involving snake heads were indeed a rare occurrence, whenever it did occur the end result was almost always catastrophic.

[@Alzaar_The_Gunzel]

As a native Victorian, the wood rail going locomotives look interesting!

[@traintimeboy]

“Not today, I’m In a hurry” BROOOO

[@peteryoung4957]

I'm glad to hear that a loco and a short piece of track were saved. You made me smile when you mentioned it was quicker to walk 😀

[@joshuaW5621]

I thought the sleepers were usually the only parts of the railways that were wood. These insane ideas just keep surprising me.

[@JohnGeorgeBauerBuis]

In North America until around the 1870s, many branch lines and some main lines had wooden rails with iron straps on top to use ordinary flanged wheels, again due to the lower cost. Heavier trains and increased use, along with ‘snakeheads’ (iron straps curling up into the floor similar to the Eschede derailment) led to their use being discontinued.

[@katho8472]

In Germany we say "Who buys cheap buys twice"...

[@420sakura1]

Cassette were cheap asf and they ruled Hume media for 2 decades.

[@upwellonwards7373]

as a kiwi and Invercargill local you got the names of locations pretty good and be happy you never had to pronounce a town in hawkes bay simply named Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauo

[@WildEyeVosevic]

The unmentioned third way to find out if someone’s a witch: building train tracks out of em

[@DC4260Productions]

Another New Zealander here, and while I've heard of this bizarre wooden railway before (or at least, the Lady Barkly locomotive), I never knew it had such a detailed history. As for the pronunciation of Maori names, I don't blame ToT for struggling with them. Elsewhere in the country, there are names just as hard (if not, even harder) to pronounce as (Lake) Wakatipu and Makarewa. Cases in point; Taumarunui, Rotorua, Tauranga and Ngaruawahia.

[@Dilbert-o5k]

I heard a tale, when I was in NZ about a tourist who having just arrived and found the local names a bit of a handful, asked a local the directions to onetreehill (onnytreehill in pronunciation). After a bit of head scratching it turned out he was looking for one tree hill😊

[@garryferrington811]

Quite a few of the early geared locomotives ran on wooden rails, but these were never meant to be long-term investments.

[@lalnablehector1285]

Ballarat & Geelong pronunciation was spot on mate you sound like a local.

[@tracynation2820]

Super. I have seen a couple of wooden railways. One had an old Mack truck with eight wood track wheels, and it looked like a flatcar with a truck cab. The Mack pulled an eight wheel trailer, and both could be loaded with timber. Another had a vertical boiler "Shay" type steam locomotive, with half round wheels that looked like an automobile rim without a tire, which ran on logs that were used for the rails, and had two four wheel flat "train" cars to transport the logs. At least one was a wooden railway that was built with finished 2 × 8 lumber that was stacked up and nailed down to the ties and each other, with the joints staggered to make the rail, and don't forget strap rail, a metal strip secured to a wooden rail supported by ties. 💙 T.E.N.

[@twmallard38]

NZ MENTIONED, WTF IS GOOD DECISION MAKING All seriousness tho, great video, as a native NZ'er, I didn't know it had this much history. All I knew about the line was that it was built and it failed, so thanks for expanding my own horizons.

[@Dilbert-o5k]

There was another wooden railway in tierra del fuego , Argentina. It was built by prisoners in a local jail iirc. It i is now rerailed in steel and is a tourist train. It is supposedly the most southerly railway on earth and is called the train at the end of the earth or similar.

[@TheFinalFrontiersman]

Yessss, I just found out about this a few weeks ago and I love it, it's such an awesome but poorly thought out system, especially the NZ incarnation.

[@TheFinalFrontiersman]

Incidentally, I believe the 'Patent' in Davies' patent locomotives is actually by one William Prosser, who built a proof of concept in London somewhere around 1843

[@vsvnrg3263]

there used to be a wooden railed horse-drawn tramway that brought jarrah timber down from the darling ranges to the canning river in perth, western australia. it ran along bickley road. besides the jarrah being used locally, it was required in the building code in melbourne (as bearers between red gum stumps and local hardwood floor joists) and was used to build block roads in london and possibly other uk cities.

[@abrr2000]

The UK has a railway that instead of sinking rocks all the way down to bedrock, actually sits on a giant raft. In short, the railway litterally floats, and you can see it sink slightly as trains go accross it. I just wish I could find out which railway line it is.

[@johnd8892]

Liverpool and Manchester over the Chat Moss wetlands. George Stephenson's idea and still in use currently because it works.

[@theenigmaticst7572]

That would be the Liverpool and Manchester Railway over Chat Moss, near Manchester. It's probably the first inter-city railway ever built. Also, the method used by George Stephenson (yes, of Rocket fame) was actually a known method of constructing roads - I think since antiquity! Still a brilliant bit of engineering, though.

[@johnd8892]

@@theenigmaticst7572 lots of people wrongly attribute Rocket to old George Stephenson , but it was produced by his son Robert Stephenson's company with input from his staff and Henry Booth. George Stephenson by that stage was concentrating on the massive civil engineering work required by the Liverpool and Manchester railway. Quite a few accurate videos on Rocket on KZbin. One of the better ones is : Rocket : The Basics by Anthony Dawson.

[@NZHazard]

Strangely enough the rail grade from Invercargill to bluff is considered to be the smoothest section of the entire South Island Mainline.

[@ukaszwalczak1154]

You may think a train on a railway with wooden rails having to be pushed up a hill is bad. Meanwhile my city's railway, a 20km, 750mm gauge railway with 3 0-6-0Ts and a 0-4-0WT[initially atleast], traveled on relatively flat land, but at a certain point on the line had to also be pushed up a relatively steep hill, and then the rest of the route was mostly flat land again. But then there were also situations where some children would smear things like butter, grease, lard, etc on the rails, which would make it even harder for the train to get up the hill.

[@Straswa]

Great work ToT. Fascinating story.

[@CraigLYoung]

It wooden rails were very common here in US. The Shay locomotive was originally design to run on wooden rails. 😅

[@toyotaprius79]

Do we ever confront the fact that in admiration of railways we never look back and say "yes the conquering of land for valuable commodities was destructive to people and land and we must reconcile with that past for the present and future"?

[@that1niceguy246]

Who is 'we', that is part of the story in many countries, especially in former colonies.

[@lukechristmas3951]

Wooden Railways. I love the jokes and the story here.

[@JohnDavies-cn3ro]

Parts of that story have a curiously modern ring to them! Certain recent English railway projects come to mind! The story about the lady in a hurry is also attributed to other railways, including the Listowel & Ballybunnion.......

[@JohnDavies-cn3ro]

PS It wasn't the only railway to use flangeless wheels, with guide wheels inside the rail though. There was another one near Paris in the 1840s, but I think they had steel rails.

[@theotherohlourdespadua1131]

The whole geology of the place makes me think an Ewing-style monorail system would have worked. Pushing forth with the idea of using two linea of rails and a heavy locomotive looks foolish in hindsight, the guy who said that a horse powered tramway is the best way forward knew his stuff...

[@cerneysmallengines]

I have a cabin in Northern Minnesota. there are a few documentations of log railways in the area, and I believe my cabin is by one. if you follow the trail, it goes straight from a former freight area in moose lake minnesota, out to the nemadji forest. I don't believe it was made out of steel track, but rather wood. I have no proof of any of this as the remnants have been lost to time. it could have easily just been a pull track for steam tractors to drag logs out

[@terrier_productions]

I have a 7.25” gauge loco which was originally based at my Grandparents’ field. The railway it ran on had wooden rails

[@TankEngineMedia]

I didn’t know that a actual wooden railway existed in real life! Good in concept, in execution not so much

[@laurencefraser]

Might want to look into Russian railways then. If I remember rightly, the transsiberian was origionally built with wooden rails on at least parts of it.

[@C.A.A93]

First image and I’m sold.

[@DennisLora2001]

Wonderful video Train of thought 2:12

[@lach_rail]

2:10 perfect pronunciation👍👍👍

[@asteroidrules]

Why was Great Northern Railway such a common name anyway? There was one in Britain, one in Ireland, one in the US, one in Canada, one in Australia, and apparently also one in New Zealand.

[@laurencefraser]

Because it was either In the north or Going north (or both), and... honestly the 'great' part... well, sometimes the project really was impressive in it's scale... sometimes it was a matter of trying to Sound impressive for marketing reasons... and I wouldn't be surprised if at least one was either someone being a pretentious twit or at least partially a joke (because humans).

[@yuliaong9617]

Speedrunning video: Wood rail: cheap but bad quality Steel rail: good but expensive

[@fhwolthuis]

The rails would also have been quite flammable, I assume 😅

[@carltonleboss]

Fascinating stuff.

[@dmdeemer]

Wooden rails are cool, but I got distracted by the music, which I think is "Forest Maze" from Super Mario RPG.

[@michaelwright2986]

All pronunciations good except perhaps Wakatipu (and I don't know the proper local Maori pronunciation). But one name you didn't put a disclaimer on was Menzies (1:40). My understanding is that the traditional Scottish pronunciation is something like Mingus (as in Charlie); it's all to do with Scottish English tending to use the same glyph as z for the letter yogh, which spells sounds we write with g and/or y. See, the spelling of the English language is perfectly rational, if you just go back to the 14th and 15th centuries (and yes, Scots at that time called that language Inglis). Northern Railway: yes, it's about as far south as you can go in Mainland NZ (Bluff feels right at the end of everything, and rather wonderful), but it's Northern because it's heading north. I'm in Auckland, and the big road up and down the island is State Highway 1, and it's a motorway here. Going out of town to the north, it's the Northern Motorway; heading south, it's the Southern M. Didn't actually strike me as all that odd when I first came here. Perhaps directional naming doesn't work with railways in Britain because everything is referenced to London???

[@robertbalazslorincz8218]

Build the line from local wood supply? Oh boy, I wonder what trees they have there.

[@garryferrington811]

Probably nothing older than the war, now.

[@Nowheres_Channel]

Taking your wooden railway to the next level. And a little too far.

[@MrToradragon]

I just wonder why they did not went for metal plates fastened to beams, just as was the case on Budweiss-Linz pferdesbahn (horse drawn railway) or later on sections of KFNB. I would say that it could have saved them significant amount of money while providing more or less all benefits of standard railway.

[@daveshockwave8098]

The Charleston and hamburg used wooden rails

[@brenlc1412]

Beware the Island’s railways

[@kito2949]

Some other people I watch truly have infected my mind because the moment I heard the tune at the end I started singing "pikmin on the gamecube where you can play it, love it or hate it you will find it on theeeeeeeerrrreeee (pikmin on the gamecube, pikmin on the game cube, pikmin on the gamecube) PIKMIN ON THE F-ING GAMECUBE. And if you know who I might be talking about, somehow, I wonder how is it possible that the overlap on people who watch vtubers and videos on trains is higher than one.

[@MatthewMakesAU]

You did pretty well with the pronunciation. It's wocka rather than whacka, but otherwise good

[@garryferrington811]

Willie Wocka and the Kiwi Factory.

[@telhudson863]

Crampton style locomotives are notorious for having poor traction. The weight of the boiler is largely carried on the unpowered front truck; the driving wheels just carry the cab and firebox. I wonder how well a proper 0-6-0 would have done? The railway demonstrated clearly that wooden rails are not suitable for a permanent way but with a decent locomotive they might have had a chance.

[@geoffgunn9673]

when you look at all the logging locomotives running on wood, they have many drive wheels, all either gear or chain driven, spreading the weight and given traction.

[@menguardingtheirownwallets6791]

There is only ONE way you can build a railroad that has wood instead of steel for the rails, and that is to use wheels that are softer than the wooden rails. The only way to do this is to use pneumatic rubber wheels on the train.

[@TheStickCollector]

It's weird that this is the second video on this subject. Seems the first video wasn't enough on the idea.

[@propeltheprototoaster8151]

Idk about the NZ pronunciation but the pronunciation of Geelong and Ballarat is correct (jeelong is good, Geelong is bad)

[@KibuFox]

American logging pole roads would like a word with the kiwis.

[@Plokman040]

More awesome stuff from the Caledonian region. Just saying as I am proud of my Scottish Ancestors.

[@microbusss]

USA 1st used rails out of wood with iron straps but the straps would curl up in heat & would go into the passenger cars theres even rails mounted onto stones!

[@woodspirit7701]

Strangely only used for timber tramways!

[@Zino-Phoenix-68]

I have a question about an locomotive called a Union Pacific 2-8-8-0 1304 steam locomotive.

[@firefox5926]

to be far stalling out isnt a traction issue is it wheel slip yes but stalling out ? i would have thought thats an engine power issue not a track issue? that said wet wood on wood probably isnt great tho i imagine sand would fix that pretty well

[@manicmechanic448]

You get what you pay for.

[@alicehodges9964]

It's Awesome I Like Steam Engines

[@Elliottblancher]

I mean logging railroads in the US have done this before

[@FunAngelo2005]

Ofcourse it whould go wrong, wood is weaker than metal

[@Iknowtoomuchable]

Dear god, he's right.

[@Razer_-fe9mo]

I built a wooden railway back when I was 3. Brio I'm pretty sure.

[@Ramtamtama]

As old-new Top Gear wold say, ambitious but rubbish. I'm wondering how much different it would be if they had the technology of today. Electric traction and wood preparation techniques may make a short light railway viable.

[@odintheallfather4863]

The real GNR was in the UK

[@420sakura1]

The Simpsons Monorail song

[@alicehodges9964]

I Like Railways And Steam Engines

[@sebastianthomsen2225]

🚂🪵🪵😅👍

[@Austriantrainguy]

engerth locomotive

[@wiltail]

dang