Talk:Railway platform height

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[edit] Great start, more needed

Good start for an article. I have added this article to some suitable categories. I could supply some anecdotal evidence, but no hard sources:

Eurostar at a high-level platform (London Waterloo).

Eurostar at a low-level platform (Moûtiers).

Two sizes of London Underground trains.

London underground and national rail trains.
  • There are two aspects to platforms, the height (above rail level), and the sideways distance from the rail to the platform. In some cases a train can overhang a platform, but if you then raise the platform you have to also move it further back to avoid the train hitting it. There is a link in the Berne gauge article to a good diagram, but the site is being re-built[1].
  • Units. This article is a mixture. I do not wish to start an edit war over units (there have been plenty of those already in Wiki), but more people understand metric than imperial. I suggest we do what is done in most other technical articles: mm (with imperial in brackets).
  • In the UK, London underground operates two different train sizes, requiring two different platform heights. Where both types share the same platform this can result in a step up or down. The larger size is similar to the nation British national network (second photo).
  • British platforms are higher, but also nearer the track, than those in continental Europe. The Eurostar trains operating through the Channel tunnel are narrower than standard TGV trains in order to fit in with British platforms. They have a retracting step. This is folded away when travelling and when stopped in Britain, but is needed in France to proved a step down to the lower French platforms and to avoid a gap.
  • German S-Bahn services also use a higher platform height than normal trains. Normal trains have 2 or 3 steps up from the platform, S-Bahn trains have a near level entry to speed up boarding. If you happen to be on a normal train which stops at a S-Bahn platform, you have a big step up to the platform (as happened to me last Sunday).
  • The article on platforms in German Wiki mentions 55 cm height for local trains, and 76 or 96 cm for S-Bahn.

Please expand this article, I'd love to know more details. TiffaF 13:32, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Expansion, cleanup

Nice start on the page. It would be nice if the longwinded sections get converted into footnotes or something. Also, if everyone would be able to add details on their own countries, like what I did with Australia, eg 'we have high / low / whatever' type info, and a numeric figure if possible. Wongm (talk) 13:59, 26 November 2007 (UTC)