Railway Loading Gauges
Part of
Joyce's World of Transport Eclectica
Let's start with a useful link to a very useful explanation of Gauges And Why We Need Them. One of the better things that the short lived Strategic Rail Authority managed to achieve was technical papers like their Gauging Policy. The SRA website may not last for ever, so I have taken the precaution of sticking a copy of the Gauge Policy on another part of my site: download it here. It's a pdf file, about 332KB in size.
This site attempts to explain the numerous different loading gauges which apply on Britain's railway network and on the networks of Continental Europe.
These gauges are (mainly) for freight wagons. They represent the maximum height and width to which vehicles can be constructed or loaded. They can only be used for vehicles of a certain length - vehicles which are longer must be built and loaded to slightly narrower dimensions.
In 1999, Railtrack devised a new nomenclature for the freight vehicle loading gauges used on Britain's national railways. The following summary is taken from the 1999 Network Management Statement: Heights and widths are in millimetres. More details can be found in Railway Group Guidance Note GE/GN8573, Guidance on Gauging, and in Network Rail's Business Plan documents. The latter include maps of the British railway network showing which routes are cleared to the different gauges. They also explains the varying combinations of loading gauge and low platform wagon which can be used to move tall containers safely. Click on the following links to see a scan of the different gauges.
Good honest British gauges:
W6
Perfidious Continental gauges:
UIC standard gauge, sometimes known as Berne Gauge
And, determined to outdo everyone else, an overweaning North American gauge:
"Double stack" container gauge
I am indebted to Bengt Dahlberg on the "5feet" mailing list for a picture of some Scandinavian and Russian loading gauges. Bengt explains that "the blue lines are for the Finnish loading gauge and probably near or the same as the Russian loading gauge. The black, yellow and green lines are the loading gauges in Sweden. At the bottom is the Chinese loading gauge".
As indeed I am to D7666 on Apologies in advance - some of the scans are better than others. If you need absolutely accurate information, you should really go direct to Network Rail's general site, or to the Network Rail Freight site. For non British gauges try the UIC - Union Internationale des Chemins de Fer site. If you can read Cyrillic script, go to this site for Russian gauges.
This information is posted for discussion purposes only and should not be relied upon for building or operating railway rolling stock. There is no guarantee that this site can be updated to reflect any changes made by Network Rail or the UIC.
It follows a number of threads in the Usenet newsgroup, uk.railway. It was last updated in July 2007 by the entity known as Joyce Whitchurch.
Comments on the text, or any broken links, are always welcome: mail me.
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British Rail code Railtrack code UIC height equivalent Height
above railWidth W6 W6 3320 2700 W6A (Freightliner 8') W7 3448 2500 W6A (Freightliner 8' 6") W8 3600 2500 SB1c W9 3715 2600 n/a W10 > UIC "A" 3896 2500 n/a W10w > UIC "A" 3896 2600 n/a W11 > UIC "B" 4130 2500 n/a W11w > UIC "B" 4130 2600
W7 Freightliner Exception Gauge (8 foot boxes)
W8 Freightliner Exception Gauge (8 foot 6 inch boxes) scan not yet available
W9 - "Swop Body" Gauge (previously known as SB1c)
C1 gauge for standard British coaching stock (Mark 1 passenger carriages, also parcels vans etc)
C3 gauge for the longer Mark 3 coaches
UIC "A" Gauge
UIC "B" Gauge
UIC "C" Gauge
Iberian Gauge (Spanish and Portuguese railways)
And a useful diagram summarising the different corner heights of UIC gauges, including UIC "B+", an improved gauge for container traffic
