Track Geometry
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Track Geometry
Track geometry is concerned with the properties and relations of points, lines, curves, and surfaces in the three-dimensional positioning of railroad track. The term is also applied to measurements used in design, construction and maintenance of track. Track geometry involves standards, speed limits and other regulations in the areas of track gauge, alignment, elevation, curvature and track surface. Standards are usually separately expressed for horizontal and vertical layouts although track geometry is three-dimensional. Layout Horizontal layout Horizontal layout is the track layout on the horizontal plane. This can be thought of as the plan view which is a view of a 3-dimensional track from the position above the track. In track geometry, the horizontal layout involves the layout of three main track types: tangent track (straight line), curved track, and track transition curve (also called transition spiral or spiral) which connects between a tangent and a curved track. Curved ...
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Track (rail Transport)
A railway track (British English and UIC terminology) or railroad track (American English), also known as permanent way or simply track, is the structure on a railway or railroad consisting of the rails, fasteners, railroad ties (sleepers, British English) and ballast (or slab track), plus the underlying subgrade. It enables trains to move by providing a dependable surface for their wheels to roll upon. Early tracks were constructed with wooden or cast iron rails, and wooden or stone sleepers; since the 1870s, rails have almost universally been made from steel. Historical development The first railway in Britain was the Wollaton Wagonway, built in 1603 between Wollaton and Strelley in Nottinghamshire. It used wooden rails and was the first of around 50 wooden-railed tramways built over the next 164 years. These early wooden tramways typically used rails of oak or beech, attached to wooden sleepers with iron or wooden nails. Gravel or small stones were packed around the s ...
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Railroad
Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a prepared flat surface, rail vehicles (rolling stock) are directionally guided by the tracks on which they run. Tracks usually consist of steel rails, installed on sleepers (ties) set in ballast, on which the rolling stock, usually fitted with metal wheels, moves. Other variations are also possible, such as "slab track", in which the rails are fastened to a concrete foundation resting on a prepared subsurface. Rolling stock in a rail transport system generally encounters lower frictional resistance than rubber-tyred road vehicles, so passenger and freight cars (carriages and wagons) can be coupled into longer trains. The operation is carried out by a railway company, providing transport between train stations or freight customer facili ...
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Railroad Switch
A railroad switch (), turnout, or ''set ofpoints () is a mechanical installation enabling railway trains to be guided from one track to another, such as at a railway junction or where a spur or siding branches off. The most common type of switch consists of a pair of linked tapering rails, known as ''points'' (''switch rails'' or ''point blades''), lying between the diverging outer rails (the ''stock rails''). These points can be moved laterally into one of two positions to direct a train coming from the point blades toward the straight path or the diverging path. A train moving from the narrow end toward the point blades (i.e. it will be directed to one of the two paths, depending on the position of the points) is said to be executing a ''facing-point movement''. For many types of switch, a train coming from either of the converging directions will pass through the switch regardless of the position of the points, as the vehicle's wheels will force the points to move. ...
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Banked Turn
A banked turn (or banking turn) is a turn or change of direction in which the vehicle banks or inclines, usually towards the inside of the turn. For a road or railroad this is usually due to the roadbed having a transverse down-slope towards the inside of the curve. The bank angle is the angle at which the vehicle is inclined about its longitudinal axis with respect to the horizontal. Turn on flat surfaces If the bank angle is zero, the surface is flat and the normal force is vertically upward. The only force keeping the vehicle turning on its path is friction, or traction. This must be large enough to provide the centripetal force, a relationship that can be expressed as an inequality, assuming the car is driving in a circle of radius ''r'': :\mu mg > . The expression on the right hand side is the centripetal acceleration multiplied by mass, the force required to turn the vehicle. The left hand side is the maximum frictional force, which equals the coefficient of friction ...
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5 Inch Track Superelevation
5 (five) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number, and cardinal number, following 4 and preceding 6, and is a prime number. It has attained significance throughout history in part because typical humans have five digits on each hand. In mathematics 5 is the third smallest prime number, and the second super-prime. It is the first safe prime, the first good prime, the first balanced prime, and the first of three known Wilson primes. Five is the second Fermat prime and the third Mersenne prime exponent, as well as the third Catalan number, and the third Sophie Germain prime. Notably, 5 is equal to the sum of the ''only'' consecutive primes, 2 + 3, and is the only number that is part of more than one pair of twin primes, ( 3, 5) and (5, 7). It is also a sexy prime with the fifth prime number and first prime repunit, 11. Five is the third factorial prime, an alternating factorial, and an Eisenstein prime with no imaginary part and real part of the form 3p ...
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Minimum Railway Curve Radius
The minimum railway curve radius is the shortest allowable design radius for the centerline of railway tracks under a particular set of conditions. It has an important bearing on construction costs and operating costs and, in combination with superelevation (difference in elevation of the two rails) in the case of train tracks, determines the maximum safe speed of a curve. The minimum radius of a curve is one parameter in the design of railway vehicles as well as trams; monorails and automated guideways are also subject to a minimum radius. History The first proper railway was the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, which opened in 1830. Like the tram roads that had preceded it over a hundred years, the L&M had gentle curves and gradients. Reasons for these gentle curves include the lack of strength of the track, which might have overturned if the curves were too sharp causing derailments. The gentler the curves, the greater the visibility, thus boosting safety via increased ...
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Inverse Function
In mathematics, the inverse function of a function (also called the inverse of ) is a function that undoes the operation of . The inverse of exists if and only if is bijective, and if it exists, is denoted by f^ . For a function f\colon X\to Y, its inverse f^\colon Y\to X admits an explicit description: it sends each element y\in Y to the unique element x\in X such that . As an example, consider the real-valued function of a real variable given by . One can think of as the function which multiplies its input by 5 then subtracts 7 from the result. To undo this, one adds 7 to the input, then divides the result by 5. Therefore, the inverse of is the function f^\colon \R\to\R defined by f^(y) = \frac . Definitions Let be a function whose domain is the set , and whose codomain is the set . Then is ''invertible'' if there exists a function from to such that g(f(x))=x for all x\in X and f(g(y))=y for all y\in Y. If is invertible, then there is exactly one function sat ...
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Chord (geometry)
A chord of a circle is a straight line segment whose endpoints both lie on a circular arc. The infinite line extension of a chord is a secant line, or just ''secant''. More generally, a chord is a line segment joining two points on any curve, for instance, an ellipse. A chord that passes through a circle's center point is the circle's diameter. The word ''chord'' is from the Latin ''chorda'' meaning '' bowstring''. In circles Among properties of chords of a circle are the following: # Chords are equidistant from the center if and only if their lengths are equal. # Equal chords are subtended by equal angles from the center of the circle. # A chord that passes through the center of a circle is called a diameter and is the longest chord of that specific circle. # If the line extensions (secant lines) of chords AB and CD intersect at a point P, then their lengths satisfy AP·PB = CP·PD (power of a point theorem). In conics The midpoints of a set of parallel chords of a coni ...
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Degree Of Curvature
Degree of curve or degree of curvature is a measure of curvature of a circular arc used in civil engineering for its easy use in layout surveying. Definition The degree of curvature is defined as the central angle to the ends of an agreed length of either an arc or a chord; various lengths are commonly used in different areas of practice. This angle is also the change in forward direction as that portion of the curve is traveled. In an ''n''-degree curve, the forward bearing changes by ''n'' degrees over the standard length of arc or chord. Usage Curvature is usually measured in radius of curvature. A small circle can be easily laid out by just using radius of curvature, but degree of curvature is more convenient for calculating and laying out the curve if the radius is large as a kilometer or a mile, as it needed for large scale works like roads and railroads. By using degrees of curvature, curve setting can be easily done with the help of a transit or theodolite and a chai ...
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Centrifugal Force
In Newtonian mechanics, the centrifugal force is an inertial force (also called a "fictitious" or "pseudo" force) that appears to act on all objects when viewed in a rotating frame of reference. It is directed away from an axis which is parallel to the axis of rotation and passing through the coordinate system's origin. If the axis of rotation passes through the coordinate system's origin, the centrifugal force is directed radially outwards from that axis. The magnitude of centrifugal force ''F'' on an object of mass ''m'' at the distance ''r'' from the origin of a frame of reference rotating with angular velocity is: F = m\omega^2 r The concept of centrifugal force can be applied in rotating devices, such as centrifuges, centrifugal pumps, centrifugal governors, and centrifugal clutches, and in centrifugal railways, planetary orbits and banked curves, when they are analyzed in a rotating coordinate system. Confusingly, the term has sometimes also been used for the reactiv ...
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Radius
In classical geometry, a radius ( : radii) of a circle or sphere is any of the line segments from its center to its perimeter, and in more modern usage, it is also their length. The name comes from the latin ''radius'', meaning ray but also the spoke of a chariot wheel. as a function of axial position ../nowiki>" Spherical coordinates In a spherical coordinate system, the radius describes the distance of a point from a fixed origin. Its position if further defined by the polar angle measured between the radial direction and a fixed zenith direction, and the azimuth angle, the angle between the orthogonal projection of the radial direction on a reference plane that passes through the origin and is orthogonal to the zenith, and a fixed reference direction in that plane. See also *Bend radius *Filling radius in Riemannian geometry *Radius of convergence * Radius of convexity *Radius of curvature *Radius of gyration ''Radius of gyration'' or gyradius of a body about the axis of r ...
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Amtrak Keystone Corridor Rosemont Curve
The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada. ''Amtrak'' is a portmanteau of the words ''America'' and ''trak'', the latter itself a sensational spelling of ''track''. Founded in 1971 as a quasi-public corporation to operate many U.S. passenger rail routes, Amtrak receives a combination of state and federal subsidies but is managed as a for-profit organization. The United States federal government, through the Secretary of Transportation, owns all the company's issued and outstanding preferred stock. Amtrak's headquarters is located one block west of Union Station in Washington, D.C. Amtrak serves more than 500 destinations in 46 states and three Canadian provinces, operating more than 300 trains daily over of track. Amtrak owns approximately of this track and operates an addit ...
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