Broader Than Broad: Hitler' Dream: 3 Metre Gauge Rails Across Europe

Barnes, Robin

ISBN 10: 0956407366 / ISBN 13: 9780956407368

Published by Camden Miniature Steam Services, 2012

About this Item

Most items will be dispatched the same or the next working day. An apparently unread copy in perfect condition. Dust cover is intact with no nicks or tears. Spine has no signs of creasing. Pages are clean and not marred by notes or folds of any kind.

Seller Inventory # wbs3747747393

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Broader Than Broad: Hitler' Dream: 3 Metre Gauge Rails Across Europe
• Publisher: Camden Miniature Steam Services
• Publication Date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0956407366
• ISBN 13: 9780956407368
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 2nd Edition
• Condition: Like New
• Weight: 400 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Robin Barnes tells the story/history of what (had it been built) would have been the most gargantuan of all railway systems. It is the story of Adolf Hitler's fantasy of a 3m gauge railway network that was to spread across and beyond his new German empire, from Spain in the west to the frontier of what he expected to be the new Japanese empire in the east.

The scale of the concept was enormous, almost beyond imagination, even by today's standards. Locomotives and rolling stock were to be 6m (20 ft) wide and up to 6.85 m (22ft 4in) high, running on rails 3m (9ft 10in) apart. Many of the locomotives were to be 60 or 70 metres in length, with one design for a passenger diesel loco, a 36,000 hp 4-unit monster, being 95 metres long. Two of the steam turbine designs were to be even longer, the largest (a 21,800 hp freight loco) being all of 128 metres in length. Of the reciprocating steam designs, one freight-haulage unit was to be a 20,000hp 8-cylinder loco, some 77.5 metres long, while the largest passenger design was of a 24,000hp 10-cylinder machine 93 metres in length and weighing well over 1000 tonnes.

No less amazing were the proposed speeds that these monsters were planned to run at. Freight locos were to haul massive trains at a modest 100 km/h, but the passenger locos (including the 93m long steam monster) were expected to run 1000 tonne trains at no less than 250 km/h. Furthermore they were to maintain that speed for hundreds of miles at a stretch.

Robin illustrates his text with a large selection of vivid water colours showing several of these monstrous locomotives and their trains. Various wagon and carriage types (including the interiors of restaurant and cinema cars) are also pictured, together with diagrams of track work and other technical features.

Rounding off this amazing book are descriptions of the several broad gauge railway concepts that came before and after Hitler's dream, some of which are as odd, even if not as spectacular, as the Fuhrer's vision.