2 ft 6 in gauge railroads in the United States

Last updated August 08, 2024

A list of 2 ft 6 in gauge railways in the United States.

Railroads

State/territory	Railway
California	Angels Flight (U.S. National Register of Historic Places status) (operating) BuJu Line ^[1] (located in Burkes Junction) (operating) Calico and Odessa Railroad (located in Calico Ghost Town) (operating) Court Flight (defunct) Frontier Village (defunct) Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland (located in Disneyland) (separate 3 ft (914 mm) gauge railway named Disneyland Railroad, separate 3 ft (914 mm) gauge railway named Main Street Vehicles, and separate 2 ft (610 mm) gauge railway named Casey Jr. Circus Train also present; and separate 3 ft (914 mm) gauge railway named Jolly Trolley previously present) (defunct – park still operating) Pacific Coast Steamship Company (defunct) Santa Rosa Valley Railroad (private) (7+1⁄2 in (190.5 mm) gauge lines also present) (operating) Viewliner Train of Tomorrow (located in Disneyland) (separate 3 ft (914 mm) gauge railway named Disneyland Railroad, separate 3 ft (914 mm) gauge railway named Main Street Vehicles, and separate 2 ft (610 mm) gauge railway named Casey Jr. Circus Train also present; and separate 3 ft (914 mm) gauge railway named Jolly Trolley previously present) (defunct – park still operating) Yosemite Short Line Railway (defunct)
Florida	Fort Wilderness Railroad (located in Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground) (defunct – resort still operating)
Hawaii	Ahukini Terminal and Railway Company (defunct) Lihue Plantation Railroad (located at the Grove Farm Sugar Plantation Museum) (U.S. National Register of Historic Places status shared between four locomotives) (operating) Kauai Railway (defunct) Kilauea Sugar Plantation (defunct) Waianae Sugar Company (defunct)
Michigan	Harbor Springs Railway (defunct)
Minnesota	Minnesota River Valley Railroad (located in Valleyfair) (operating)
Montana	Alder Gulch Short Line Railroad ^[2] (operating)
Nebraska	Omaha Zoo Railroad (located in Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium) (operating)
Oregon	Washington Park & Zoo Railway (located in Oregon Zoo and Washington Park (Portland, Oregon)) (operating)
Pennsylvania	Cedar Creek Cannonball (located in Dorney Park & Wildwater Kingdom) (separate 2 ft (610 mm) gauge railway named Zephyr Railroad also present) (operating) Shay Railroad (located at the Rough and Tumble Engineers Historical Association) (separate 15 in (381 mm) gauge railway named Little Toot Railroad also present) (operating)

Gallery

Angels Flight is a historic funicular railway located in Downtown Los Angeles.
The Washington Park and Zoo Railway's #1 Steam locomotive decorated for Christmas.

Related Research Articles

A narrow-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge narrower than 1,435 mmstandard gauge. Most narrow-gauge railways are between 600 mm and 1,067 mm.

A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of 1,435 mm. The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge, international gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge in Europe, and SGR in East Africa. It is the most widely used track gauge around the world, with about 55% of the lines in the world using it.

A transcontinental railroad or transcontinental railway is contiguous railroad trackage, that crosses a continental land mass and has terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Such networks can be via the tracks of either a single railroad or over those owned or controlled by multiple railway companies along a continuous route. Although Europe is crisscrossed by railways, the railroads within Europe are usually not considered transcontinental, with the possible exception of the historic Orient Express. Transcontinental railroads helped open up interior regions of continents not previously colonized to exploration and settlement that would not otherwise have been feasible. In many cases they also formed the backbones of cross-country passenger and freight transportation networks. Many of them continue to have an important role in freight transportation and some like the Trans-Siberian Railway even have passenger trains going from one end to the other.

A broad-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge broader than the 1,435 mm used by standard-gauge railways.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">White Pass and Yukon Route</span> Canada–US railway line

The White Pass and Yukon Route is a Canadian and U.S. Class III 3 ft narrow-gauge railroad linking the port of Skagway, Alaska, with Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon. An isolated system, it has no direct connection to any other railroad. Equipment, freight and passengers are ferried by ship through the Port of Skagway, and via road through a few of the stops along its route.

4-4-0, in the Whyte notation, denotes a steam locomotive with a wheel arrangement of four leading wheels on two axles, four powered and coupled driving wheels on two axles, and no trailing wheels.

The Plant System, named after its owner, Henry B. Plant, was a system of railroads and steamboats in the U.S. South, taken over by the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad in 1902. The original line of the system was the Savannah, Florida and Western Railway, running across southern Georgia. The Plant Investment Company was formed in 1882 to lease and buy other railroads and expand the system. Other major lines incorporated into the system include the Savannah and Charleston Railroad and the Brunswick and Western Railroad.

The Calico & Odessa Railroad is a 2 ft 6 in narrow gauge heritage railroad in the ghost town of Calico, California, headquartered in Yermo, California. It was named for the town and mountain range of Calico and the nearby Odessa Canyon.

The Sumpter Valley Railway, or Sumpter Valley Railroad, is a 3 ft narrow gauge heritage railroad located in Baker County, in the U.S. state of Oregon. Built on a right-of-way used by the original railway of the same name, it carries excursion trains on a roughly 5-mile (8.0 km) route between McEwen and Sumpter. The railroad has two steam locomotives and several other pieces of rolling stock. Passenger excursion trains operate on weekends and holidays from Memorial Day through the end of September.

HOn30 gauge is the modelling of narrow-gauge railways in HO on N gauge track in 1:87 scale ratio.

The Western River Railroad is a 2 ft 6 in narrow gauge rail transport attraction in Tokyo Disneyland, which opened on April 15, 1983. Its route is 5,283 feet (1,610 m) long and takes guests through the Adventureland, Westernland, and Critter Country sections.

Rail transport in the Dominican Republic is provided by one state-owned operator and several private ones, mainly for sugar mills. There are no connections with the neighbouring Haiti.

The vast majority of North American railroads are standard gauge. Exceptions include some streetcar, subway and rapid transit systems, mining and tunneling operations, and some narrow-gauge lines particularly in the west, e.g. the isolated White Pass and Yukon Route system, and the former Newfoundland Railway.

Originally, various track gauges were used in the United States. Some railways, primarily in the northeast, used standard gauge of 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in ; others used gauges ranging from 2 ft to 6 ft. As a general rule, southern railroads were built to one or another broad gauge, mostly 5 ft, while northern railroads that were not standard-gauge tended to be narrow-gauge. The Pacific Railroad Acts of 1863 specified standard gauge.

This is a list of 3 ft narrow-gauge railways in the United States.

Two foot and 600 mm gauge railways are narrow gauge railways with track gauges of 2 ft and 600 mm, respectively. Railways with similar, less common track gauges, such as 1 ft 11+3⁄4 in and 1 ft 11+1⁄2 in, are grouped with 2 ft and 600 mm gauge railways.

A list of 2 ft, 1 ft 11+3⁄4 in, 600 mm, and 1 ft 11+1⁄2 in narrow-gauge railways in the United Kingdom.

A list of 2 ft narrow-gauge railways in the United States.

A list of 3 ft 6 in gauge railways in the United States. Apart from historical railways, it is commonly used in underground coal mines. Also, in the past, this gauge had been a popular choice for urban mass transit systems.

The Southern California Railway Museum, formerly known as the Orange Empire Railway Museum, is a railroad museum in Perris, California, United States. It was founded in 1956 at Griffith Park in Los Angeles before moving to the former Pinacate Station as the "Orange Empire Trolley Museum" in 1958. It was renamed "Orange Empire Railway Museum" in 1975 after merging with a museum then known as the California Southern Railroad Museum, and adopted its current name in 2019. The museum also operates a heritage railroad on the museum grounds.

References

↑ "BuJu Line – official website" . Retrieved 18 January 2019.
↑ "Alder Gulch Short Line Railroad – official website". Archived from the original on 2006-05-07. Retrieved 2014-05-09.

External links

World-wide 30" Gauge Railways and Railroads

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[1] "BuJu Line – official website" . Retrieved 18 January 2019.

[2] "Alder Gulch Short Line Railroad – official website". Archived from the original on 2006-05-07. Retrieved 2014-05-09.

[1]

[2]

v t e Track gauge (list)
Minimum-gauge Minimum-gauge railways	15 in (381 mm) 400 mm (15+3⁄4 in) 16 in (406 mm) 18 in (457 mm) 19 in (483 mm) 500 mm (19+3⁄4 in) 20 in (508 mm) 21 in (533 mm) 1 ft 10 in (559 mm)
Narrow gauge	2 foot and 600 mm 2 ft 3 in (686 mm) 750 mm (2 ft 5+1⁄2 in) 760 mm (2 ft 5+15⁄16 in) 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) 800 mm (2 ft 7+1⁄2 in) 891 mm (2 ft 11+3⁄32 in) Swedish three foot 900 mm (2 ft 11+7⁄16 in) 3 ft (914 mm) 950 mm (3 ft 1+3⁄8 in) Italian metre gauge 1,000 mm (3 ft 3+3⁄8 in) metre gauge 1,050 mm (3 ft 5+11⁄32 in), 1,055 mm (3 ft 5+1⁄2 in), 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) 1,093 mm (3 ft 7 in), 1,100 mm (3 ft 7+5⁄16 in), 1,200 mm (3 ft 11+1⁄4 in) 4 ft (1,219 mm) 4 ft 1 in (1,245 mm), Middleton Railway 4 ft 6 in (1,372 mm), Scotch gauge 4 ft 6+1⁄2 in (1,384 mm), Scotch gauge 4 ft 7+3⁄4 in (1,416 mm) 4 ft 8 in (1,422 mm), almost standard gauge 4 ft 8+1⁄4 in (1,429 mm) 1,432 mm (4 ft 8+3⁄8 in)
Standard gauge	4 ft 8+1⁄2 in / 1,435 mm, Stephenson gauge
Broad gauge	1,440 mm (4 ft 8+11⁄16 in) 1,445 mm (4 ft 8+7⁄8 in) 1,450 mm (4 ft 9+3⁄32 in) 4 ft 9+3⁄8 in (1,457 mm) 1,458 mm (4 ft 9+13⁄32 in) 4 ft 10+7⁄8 in (1,495 mm), Toronto gauge 5 ft / 1,524 mm and 1,520 mm (4 ft 11+27⁄32 in), Russian gauge. 5 ft 2+1⁄4 in / 1,581 mm and 5 ft 2+1⁄2 in / 1,588 mm, Pennsylvania gauge 5 ft 3 in (1,600 mm), Irish gauge 5 ft 4+1⁄2 in (1,638 mm), Baltimore gauge 1,668 mm (5 ft 5+21⁄32 in), Iberian gauge 5 ft 6 in (1,676 mm), Indian gauge 7 ft 1⁄4 in (2,140 mm), Brunel gauge 3,000 mm (9 ft 10+1⁄8 in), Breitspurbahn 8,200 mm (26 ft 10+27⁄32 in), Lärchwandschrägaufzug 9,000 mm (29 ft 6+5⁄16 in), Krasnoyarsk ship lift
List of track gauge articles	List of track gauges List of tram track gauges Miniature railways Minimum-gauge railways Large amusement railways
Gauge differences	Bogie exchange Break of gauge Dual gauge Gauge conversion list Variable gauge
Transport mode	Tram and light rail Rapid transit Miniature Scale model
Categories	by country by imperial units by metric units by name lists of track gauges