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As Railway s developed and expanded one of the key issues to be decided was that of the Rail Gauge (the distance, or Width , between the inner sides of the rails) that should be used. The eventual result was the adoption throughout a large part of the world of a standard gauge of 1435 mm (4 ft 8½ in), allowing inter-connectivity and the inter-operability of Train s. Currently 60% of the world's railway lines are built to this gauge. It is also named '''Stephenson gauge''' after George Stephenson . In England some early lines in colliery areas in the north east of the country were built to a gauge of ; and in Scotland some early lines were ( Scotch Gauge ). By 1846, in both countries, these lines were widened to standard gauge. Parts of the United States rail system, mainly in the northeast, adopted the same gauge because some early trains were purchased from Britain. However, until well into the second half of the 19th Century Britain and the USA had several different track gauges. The American gauges slowly converged as the advantages of equipment interchange became more and more apparent; the destruction of much of the South's Broad Gauge system in the American Civil War hastened this trend. LIST List Of Standard Gauge By Country ORIGIN The English railway pioneer s in the mines. Stephenson used the same gauge (with an extra half-inch of slack) for the Liverpool And Manchester Railway opened five years later. The success of this led to Stephenson (and his son Robert ) being employed to engineer several other larger railway projects. This influence appears to be the main reason that this particular gauge became the standard, and its usage became more widespread than any other gauge. Subsequently, engineers have shown that a narrow gauge is less than ideal: despite usually offering cheaper construction, a smaller gauge restricts speeds due to a reduced load stability. Broader gauges are theoretically more stable at speed and allow larger, wider, heavier loads. According to Isambard Kingdom Brunel 's studies the optimum gauge for a rail system (and the one he originally used on his Great Western Railway ) is 7 ft 0¼ in (2140 mm). In the should be built to a standard gauge of ; and those in Ireland to a standard gauge . It allowed the broad gauge companies in Great Britain to continue repair their tracks and to expanded their networks within the Limits of Deviation and the exceptions defined in the Act. After an intervening period of Mixed-gauge operation (tracks were laid with three running-rails), the Great Western Railway finally converted its entire network to standard gauge in 1892. A popular legend traces the origin of the gauge even further back than the coalfields of northern England, pointing to the evidence of rutted roads marked by Chariot wheels dating from the Roman Empire . This legend may have some truth, as there is a historical tendency to place the wheels of horse-drawn vehicles approximately apart, which probably derives simply from the width needed to fit a Carthorse in between the shafts. See also: IDEAL GAUGE There has been much controversy about what constitutes the "ideal gauge". From a design point of view, a train can travel faster around a given radius of track if the gauge is wider, as the Centre Of Gravity of the train is therefore further displaced from the wheels, which in turn lowers the angle between the wheel's lower contact surface to the centre of gravity, and horizontal. Given that one can tailor either the track radius for train speed, or the train speed for track radius, gauge in some cases may not be as important as interoperability. There are many examples of high speed and high mass applications on narrow gauges throughout the world, suggesting that gauge is less important than the original supporters of either Broad Gauge or narrower gauges held it to be:
With the benefit of hindsight, little was gained by building railway systems too narrow (down to about 3 ft (900 mm)) or too broad (up to about 7 ft (2100 mm)) gauges, and this was at the cost of limited interoperability. For an example of the difficulties of interoperability see the Ramsey Car Transfer Apparatus and the Variable Gauge Axles used to transfer cars between different gauges of track. Only in gauges of less than can a railway be built significantly more cheaply than is possible with standard gauge, and only then in mountainous terrain, or where a low capacity line is required, or with industrial railways where through running is not required. It can be argued therefore, that the original uniform gauge adopted by Stephenson in 1830 can serve most of the tasks performed by gauges from 3 to 7 ft (900 to 2100 mm), albeit with a mini gauge of about 2 ft (600 mm) for cane tramways, underground mine, mountain, construction, temporary and military railways, plus children's railways. PIGGYBACK OPERATION For interoperability, if possible, the mini-gauge trams should be able to piggyback on top of standard gauge flat wagons, to reach workshops and other narrow gauge lines to which they are not otherwise connected. Piggyback operation by the trainload occurred as a temporary measure between Port Augusta and Marree during Gauge Conversion works in the 1950s , to bypass steep gradients in the Flinders Ranges . Piggyback operation was a permanent feature of the Padarn Railway in North Wales. It is also possible for standard gauge vehicles to operate over narrow gauge tracks using adaptor vehicles; the Rollbocke Transporter Wagon arrangements in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic are examples. BREAK OF GAUGE See Also: Break-of-gauge When a railway line of one gauge meets another railway line of a different gauge, there is a break of gauge. A break of gauge adds cost and inconvenience to traffic that must pass from one system to another. An example of this is on the Transmanchurian Railway , where Russia and Mongolia use Broad Gauge while China uses the standard gauge. At the border, each carriage has to be lifted in turn to have its Bogie s changed. The whole operation, combined with Passport and Customs control, can take several hours. This can be avoided however by implementing a system similar to that used in Australia, where lines between states using different gauges are built as Dual Gauge . Thus the lines have 3 rails, one set of two forming a standard gauge line, with the third rail either inside or outside the standard set forming rails at either narrow or broad gauge. As a result, trains built to either gauge can use the line. STANDARD GAUGE IN MODEL RAILWAYS See Also: Rail transport modelling In American model railroading, standard gauge was originally an effort by Lionel Corporation to corner the U.S. market in the early years of the 20th century. Lionel standardized its offerings on Three-rail track with a gauge of 2 1/8 in (54 mm) between the outer rails, making it incompatible with Gauge 1 offerings from European manufacturers. Lionel then registered a trademark on Standard Gauge. Other American companies followed Lionel's lead, standardizing on Lionel's new standard but calling it Wide Gauge in order to avoid infringing on Lionel's trademark. Standard gauge fell out of favour in the 1930s because of its high cost, and Lionel discontinued its Standard gauge offerings in 1940 . Although scale modeling was not of primary concern, standard gauge's scale is generally accepted at 1:26.59, making it somewhat smaller than G Scale . More recently, standard gauge has come to mean scale modelling in which the track is accurately scaled to real-world standard gauge. This is opposed to Narrow Gauge modeling, which models real-world narrow gauge, or off-scale modeling, where track is not true to scale, such as in O Gauge . REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINKS
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