page_title: Spalding railway
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: Spalding railway / Design
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Oberbau-Systeme nach Spalding und Dolberg.
context_page_description: The Spalding railway was a German narrow gauge railway system invented, patented and developed by Heinrich Andreas Spalding in 1884 for forestry and agriculture applications. It was similar to the Decauville railway, which had been invented and patented in France eight years earlier.
context_section_description: The Spalding railway used Vignoles rails. The rail joints were initially supported by two wooden sleepers, one of them was wide and the other narrow (Figure 18a), with the wide sleeper protruding beyond the end of one pair of rails, while the narrow one was recessed from the end of the other panel. When the prefabricated panels were joined together, the broad sleeper of one panel lay next to the narrow sleeper of the other. The free rail ends were bolted together using fishplates as in conventional tracks. The system had the advantage that required repairs were easy make but the height of the wooden sleepers prevented the use of horses, and level crossings with other traffic.
  The Dolberg works in Rostock improved the Spalding system by using metal tie rods and by omitting the narrow wooden sleeper at one end of the panel. To secure the butt joint, the rails were hooked onto a metallic sleeper at one end. One rail was provided with a hooked tab which engaged around a metallic tie rod at the end of the other rails. Th joint could only be taken apart by lifting the opposite end of the frame (Figures 19 and 20). The easy disassembly allowed other traffic to cross easily at level crossings by simply lifting one or two sections from the rail line.
  The 2 m track sections with a gauge of 600 mm consisted of rails that were connected at both ends by metallic tie rods and rested on wooden sleepers. One man could carry a section with ease. Curved sections were bent with a radius of 4 m. They were only 1.5 meters long and could be used for right and left turns. 
  The 4 m long Spalding universal switch was provided with guard rails, which should make a derailment impossible even if the points were set incorrectly. By simply unscrewing the rails from the pad and then re-assembling them upside-down, a right turn could be turned into a left turn and vice versa, since the switches were made of symmetrical double-headed rail profiles. Turntables with connecting rails were used for right-angle turns. The turntable was easy and safe to operate, because it could be locked after each rotation by using a light lever.
caption: Track systems by Spalding and Dolberg, 1892[2]
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