I worked for one of the largest U.S. railroads for 40 years in the Engineering Department (Track). The thing about gauge is this, it's very hard to keep track within specifications. You think you lay your rail at 56-1/2" and it just stays there. NOPE! On curves, the high, or outer rail, gets worn due to the wheel wanting to go straight. So with rail wear on curves, and the pressure on the low side rail on slow moving uphill trains, keeping gauge within safe operating standards is a full-time battle. Some people will blame wood cross ties (sleepers in the U.K.) but concrete ties also allow the gauge to spread over time. So we have standards we learn and go by and work very hard to keep the railroad safe for everyone.
Thanks for the informative comment. Is this particularly a problem for this guage, or would (otherwise practical other than switching costs) gauges suffer less?
Following the civil war in the US, there was a severe problem with non-standard gage tracks in the South. To solve the problem all the narrow guages were made standard on one day. Obviously this required great planning and labor.
A narrower gauge makes for greater speed and efficiency. Two wheels are connected by an axle and there is a tendency for one of the wheels to rotate a little faster and the other a little slower until the faster rotating wheel becomes a little 'stuck' - it doesn't stop. The wheel that was rotation g more slowly then becomes the wheel that was rotating faster and so on ad infinitum. The effect is to introduce greater resistance to forward motion. This resistance is reduced by narrowing the gauge. The most efficient gauge is a monorail, which clearly does not suffer from this problem. See th-cam.com/video/Z8AOfoRmE00/w-d-xo.htmlsi=mAL-NDsCwJyr4tEB That the gauge of a railway should be similar to the width of a cart is hardly a surprising phenomenon.
My lecturer at Uni told us that 4'8.5" was the distance between a young woman's ankles and her neck so she would lie nicely when you tied her to the rails. I prefer his explanation
"Standards" aren't chosen in a vacuum, as some kind of Platonic ideal, they are chosen/adapted from existing practice sometimes almost unthinkingly. Thank you for the nice exploration of this.
So four-foot-eight-and-a-half evolved from five feet, not from Roman chariots. Five feet, minus four inches for going with flanges, plus half an inch for the binding on curves. Thank you, excellent Stevenson. OK. Did or did not that five feet come from Roman chariots?
Well, yea, because they had to focus on other, more pressing issues, like developing safer/better locomotive and designing comfortable carriage for people, etc. Why spend time and resources thinking about gauge, when there was one around (i.e. the 5' from earlier time). Furthermore, how can you justify why should you pick 7', and not 8' or 6', or whatever? IMO standards should be this way (defined by practical needs), not set by the academia inside their ivory towers.
@@TheDavidlloydjones The first 4 feet of a chariot belong to the horse , of course. Two additional feet , provided by the human , function as a single unit since they are together upon a platform. Hence , 1 Chariot = 5 feet. There ! 🧐 SOLVED ! Makes perfect Horse Sense , 🙏 Long May They Rein 🙏
Technically, the 4'8.5 inch gauge applies in Britain and not the UK as Northern Ireland uses the Irish gauge of 5'3", set out as the standard gauge for Ireland under the Railway Regulation (Gauge) Act 1846.
Interestingly, British engineers built many of the railways in Brazil, a lot of them with this “irish” gauge. Standard gauge only became used recently for lightrail so they can buy off the shelf equipment.
When I worked on a ranch in the British Columbia interior in the 1990's we put our irrigation pumps on an old railway cart so we could more easily raise and lower them as the river rose and fell. We began to build the sloping wooden track down to the river. The ranch foreman wondered what the Canadian rail gauge was and before he measured the wheels I told him confidently "four-foot eight and a half inches!" Mr. Stephenson's influence reaches far in geography and time indeed!
The Didcot Newbury and Southampton railway- a massively important railway for the movement of all the materiel needed for the D-Day invasion. It was so important that much of it was made into double track in 1942/43 to cope with the increasing traffic. Within twenty years the line would be closed and shortly afterwards a huge container terminal opened in Southampton. This railway should have been the key freight route to the north but it was tossed away and huge sums have been spent in the last few years trying to increase capacity on the existing railways which could have been avoided to a degree by this railway being kept open.
Yes, I travelled the A34 daily a while back and the constant stream of car loaders taking new MINI's, Jaguars and Land-Rovers to the docks in Southampton was awesome. No chance to reopen the railway now. But what a bad decision Beeching made.
I think that closure- first passengers in 1962 and then freight in 1964 was a pre-Beeching move by BR as the Beeching report was published in 1963. In my mind, there was complicity between senior railway management with the Beeching plan. Firstly, there was money to be made from selling off the land- especially, in towns and cities and many lines subsequently closed were still steam hauled and the money from the Modernisation Plan had not replaced steam- much of it was wasted. By shutting lines ( not necessarily this one for freight) steam could be eliminated faster while keeping the lines open meant going back to the government for more money for diesels or electric traction etc which would have been politically impossible. It was a "win/win" for railway management- get rid of problems- get rid of "over-capacity" and have an easier life. Wiki tells us that at its peak, the DN&S had 120 trains a day! I first became interested in it when I walked some of the newly lifted track bed near Winchester in 1966 and a few years later read the railway and travel author George Behrend's classic book "Gone With Regret". He was born at Burghclere on the line and the book was published in 1964- just as it was finally axed and chucked away by shortsighted stupidity- along with thousands more miles of railway. At the very least, the integrity of the closed lines should have been protected for a designated time- but asset-stripping was the main plan.
@@NickRatnieksI’ve always wondered why removal of the track bed and embankments was ever allowed. Even if the line is closed and the rails removed keeping the groundworks intact allowed future unforeseen options. But they were not even able to imagine future possibilities it seems.
I laughed when you mentioned Australian railways being a mess, as an Aussie I totally agree with that assessment. New South Wales is 100% standard gauge and always was, Victoria adopted Irish broad gauge for whatever reason and mostly stuck with it (a standard gauge line was added between Wodonga on the Victorian border and Melbourne for through passenger trains in the 80"s), Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland adopted 3 foot 6 inch narrow gauge but loading gauge differs slightly between them, then there's the Trans Continental line which finally standardised on standard gauge in 1973 causing W.A. to have a weird dual gauge system from Kalgoorlie to Perth and S.A. to actually have all 3 gauges with no direct connections between any of them. It was even a topic in Australia before Federation and much more so in the decades after, still took until after WWII for any direct connections between any of the capital cities to happen and is half the reason why most fly between capital cities rather than use trains (the Indian Pacific is just a tourist train now and has been since the late 80's).
NSW, Vic and SA all adopted 5'3" at the instigation of NSW (who had an Irish "chief" engineer). Vic and SA ordered rolling stock. NSW delayed just a little, got a new Scottish engineer, who insisted on 4'8½". This was too late for Vic and SA to change their order, so they stuck with 5'3". The credibility of these early engineers and their decisions are up for debate! Qld went for 3'6" as it was an underpopulated new colony, was building its first line up the range from Ipswich to Toowoomba, and couldn't afford large curves, or even wide sleepers. Tas started with 5'3", but quickly gained many much narrower gauges (for the short mountain tramways). The Tasmanian Main Line Railway went with 3'6" even though the Government lines were 5'3". But TMLR was bought by the government and because this was the longest line, 3'6" became standard (and made more sense for the terrain). WA was also a poor colony (then) and 3'6" was cheaper. SA also wanted the economy of 3'6". Where Victoria had mountainous terrain, 2'6" was used for a handful of lines. All states had private tramways/railways at a bewildering number of gauges. Australia-wide, these included: 1'3" (Bronte), 1'4½" (Mt Barker), 1'6" (Weston Park), 1'8" (Sons of Gwalia), 2'0" (Cane railways), 2'1" (Back Creek Slate Mine), 2'2" (Mount Morgan), 2'2¼" (Katoomba), 2'3" (North Head Quarantine), 2'6" (Vic), 2'6½" (Charters Towers Water Board), 2'7" (Kawarren limeworks), 2'8" (Semaphore Jetty), 2'8½" (?), 2'9" (Greta), 2'10" (Mount Pleasant), 3'0" (Powelltown), 3'1" (?), 3'3" (Tin Can Bay), 3'4½" (Rubicon), 3'6" (Cape), 3'6½" (El Caballo Blanco), 3'8½" (Mount Keira), 3'11" (Katoomba Scenic Railway), 4'0" (Kermandie), 4'2" (NSW logging), 4'3" (Latrobe tramway ?), 4'3½" (Latrobe tramway ?), 4'6" (Tatong), 4'8½" (Standard) 5'3" (Irish) 6'0" (Kermandie) as well as 700mm (Appleton Dock), 825mm (Charters Towers), 900mm (SEC Interconnecting), 1m (Hartley Vale), and 9.6m (Australia Telescope). Melbourne and Adelaide were connected 5'3" in 1886. The standard gauge crept into southern Qld and Sydney and Brisbane were connected 4'8½" in 1930. Yes, WW2 did show the deficiencies in the different gauges. Sydney and Melbourne were connected 4'8½" in 1962. Sydney to Perth via Broken Hill in 1969, Alice Springs to this 4'8½" line in 1980 (reaching Darwin in 2004), and Adelaide in 1983. The Melbourne-Adelaide route was converted to Standard Gauge in 1995 along with much of western Victoria and parts of South Australia. Canberra was connected to Queanbeyan (and Sydney) in 1914. We still have Queensland, Western Australia, Tamania and much of South Australia as 3'6", most of Victoria, suburban Adelaide, and some other parts of South Australia at 5'3", and all of NSW and the trunk routes between state capitals at 4'8½". Still a lot of cane railways (in Qld) at 2'0". Also several tourist/miniature (etc) railways at odd gauges, even if only for very short lengths.
@@mrewan6221 Credibility -- of two closely related sources of the same information, engineers and engineers' decisions -- is a singular noun. It *is* up for debate.
@@TheDavidlloydjones That's what you got out of it? Your interpretation of a supposed grammar error in something I said? I disagree with your interpretation. Strip away all the gramitically-irrelevant words: "credibility and decisions are" or "credibility and decisions is"? Maybe your variety of English has the singular here; mine has the plural.
and New Zealand is 3'6" or 1,067mm throughout the country. (Same as some of the Ausrtralian States) But Auckland, Otago and Southland provinces started with the British standard of 4' 81/2", and Canterbury 5'3", and I'm not sure about the rest of the country..... but the various provincial govt's were buying in second hand rolling stock and engines from other British colonies, who all had different gauges. Hence, in the beginning, NZ's railway gauges were all over the place.
@@colonelfustercluck486 Yes. NZ has all sorts. I don't think NZ was part of the NSW-Vic-SA-Tas agreement, as it was pretty certain by then that NZ was never going to merge. Australia still held out hope, though; NZ is in the Aus constitution as a possible state, and the streets radiating out from Parl House in Canberra had one resereved for Wellington. The others are named after state capitals. When it was quite clear there would be no State of New Zealand, that street was renamed to Canberra Avenue.
I think one of the most incredible endeavours on changing track gauge was in the Southern states of the US in May/June1886. Over 11,000 miles of track were converted from 5 foot to 4 foot 9 inch gauge in just 36 hours over one weekend. On the Friday, trains were running on Russian gauge and on the Monday on Pennsylvania gauge.
And then there's the modern alchemy of the Spanish trains. Not stopping, a button is pressed and bogies lift up, they breathe in, expand symmetrically whirr about a bit and generally enjoy the novelty of fresh air blowing through their innards. Then quick as a flash, yet still in a regimented manner, wheels axles, bits and bobs come together in a slimmer (or bulkier) looking bogie. Over and again, all the way along the train. A marvel of modern engineering, it has basically changed its underpants, found that the next pair has a hole in them, replaced those and successfully put on a third pair _In Public_ no less _whilst jogging down Regent Street_
Interesting. The Netherlands started out on broad gauge (1945 mm, or 6 ft, 4 inch, and a bit). There was another force for us: international trade and international railway connections. The first bit of standard gauge was a connection to Germany, and eventually standard gauge was demanded by law.
The main GWR gauge conversion was in the early 1870s. The broad gauge was only retained for through working to the independent companies west of Bristol. But these companies were eventually taken over by the Great Western and it was their lines which were famously converted in 1892 bringing the 7ft gauge completely to an end.
Brunel was the son of a French engineer who served under Napoleon and migrated to the UK. He passed his engineering skills down to his son who was - to all intents and purposes - the inheritor of a French engineering tradition. I wonder if Brunel's choice of gauge was influenced by his French background?
But the relevant question is, when did the GWR stop building railways to 7ft gauge? I don't mean extra sidings and track renewals, but as in extending mainlines. I do know that the GWR kept on having to build new broad gauge locomotives, almost right to the end, owing to replacements needed due to age of equipment and demand. Many were convertible (to standard gauge and indeed were) but some were broad gauge only.
A nice video. Been an ex railway worker on the Birmingham to Oxford line. There was at a time next to the track south of Leamington a couple of feet of seven foot gauge covering the water spill. So you had the 2 standard gauge lines and to the side the Seven foot gauge for a couple of feet.
While the Great Western and its allies continued building 7-foot gauge lines, the thing that killed it was that the GWR ended up buying smaller railway companies that were standard gauge - particularly their routes into the Midlands. Thus meant they had a non-standardisation issue within the company and had to build mixed gauge lines into Paddington and elsewhere which was a pain. While the 7-foot gauge has some technical advantages for main lines it was just the sheer quantity of standard gauge lines that won it.
I imagine that added to the sheer quantity was the fact that putting standard gauge into broad gauge infrastructure, with its bridges, tunnels etc, would be far quicker, simpler, cheaper, than trying to expand standard gauge infrastructure to accommodate broad.
5 feet is just a good width for a wagon. You can comfortably fit two people side by side inside it. So most wagons through history have had wheels that are approximately 5 feet. It hasn't evolved from Roman gauge, it just that everyone everywhere used it. Much smaller than that, and a wagon doesn't fit two, and becomes unstable, and much wider than that and you have to make very wide roads for no reason.
@RegebroRepairs No. Everywhere didn't use it. Shropshire used a 4' gauge at its collieries. They used even narrower gauges for slate quarries. The Ffestiniog Railway uses a gauge of 23.5 inches.
Exactly it. It’s evolved as a useful size that one man could push about, a horse could pull and would be still narrow enough to fit down adits, between houses etc.
Yes, he doesn't really disprove the old horse's rear explanation. Cart widths come from ancient times, wagon ways were built around existing wagons, which evolved into plate ways and the current gauge follows directly from there.
Here in Australia there were a few anomalies between rail gauge and carriage width. Even had bogie changes. Same carriage or goods truck with the bogies changed according to the rail gauge ahead!
In peninsular Spain, the first railway from Barcelona to Mataró was 1440mm. However, a real scientific engineering commision was established around the 1860s to determine the best railway gauge. Since Spain is a country with much topographic unevenness and more steam power was needed than in most of flat Europe and UK, the gauge of 1668 mm was determined by considering the size of the steam cylinders between the wheels. Spain had many of Europe's steepest gradients.
@@johndododoe1411 Royal commissions and decrees were up until 1860 which permitted the private laying of rail roads, after that a junta commission was set up to plan out the lines over the whole of spain and the infrastructure that goes with. I think the Engineering commission fell under the junta and his 'real' just means the first real official one. As before that it was up to the private investors to decide what they wanted.
@@jhnshep I don't know the specifics of Spanish rail history, but do remember that other Spanish regimes used royal prefixes for institutions even without royal involvement, and that some Spanish land ownership paperwork used abbreviations from the Roman republic long after the emperors took over .
@@johndododoe1411 Like Real Compania Irlandesa? 😅 perhaps, though he wrote 'a real' not the real, though only he can clarify that. I had to go look up a paper I flicked through once not so long ago and i couldn't find anything for the 'Real', it was a study on how different governments got involved in rail, spain being late. Anyhoo I found it again 'The Radiality of the Railway Network in Spain during its Early Stages (1830-67): An Assessment of its Territorial Coherence'. And I was looking up something for rail between france and spain that I stumbled on that one.
Hi Paul, firstly many thanks for your productions last year, well made and beautifully presented by both of you. Secondly may I impart a little knowledge in your direction? Marc Brunel and Maudsley were contracted to fit out the Royal Dock-Yards with their block (as in pulley systems) making machinery. Marc Brunel being a French National (in exile, and married to an English woman) was not allowed into the Docks themselves. In his inimitable form he placed his Son Isambard as a foreman for his company, see Thames Tunnel for details. Part of the installation was to provide up-dated handling for the timber used as well as timber for the masts. To move the large baulks and logs around Marc specified a short tram/rail line of 7 foot gauge. When the GWR was built Isambard used technology he was familiar with along with the gauge he knew, as an aside the Dock Yard lines were short and laid with the baulk method exactly as the GWR was built. Thank you again and best wishes for the future.
Fantastic! Non-sequitur, but it made me think: I wonder if there are old weigh houses / weigh stations along the Thames near the ports or rail stations, that can be explored. I supported modern weigh stations at Port Melbourne - REALLY interesting logistics of pre and post grain drop-off weighing of entire trucks (and ~$10k per hour in opportunity cost if your weigh station breaks - The trains pile up, and trucks just take their business elsewhere).
@@pwhitewick highly interesting as the issue applied to Britain & the empire thanks.. BUT.. a 2nd episode explaining the adoption of other gauges as in the US etc.. & how geography played a roll in determining gauge decisions IE tight turns etc around hilly terrain.. 👍 from the colonies NZ
I do love that old story of rocket boosters being designed due to railway gauges being determined from roman horses backsides, saying that Paul, you have done a lovely job explaining how railway gauges developed 🚂👍
It was always suspect of a story to since the rocket boosters in question (Thiokol/ATK/Northrop Grumman Space Shuttle/SLS boosters) are about 12 feet wide... so at least 6 to 8 horse ass wide and not two. 😂 Loading gauge is more important than track gauge there for load clearances.
@@PJWey no, the Space Shuttle boosters were a product of the 1970's. Besides, there were alternative rocket transport options available such as the Pegasus barge which was first used for the Saturn V. I believe they were built in Huntsville, Alabama then shipped out down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico then onto Florida. Really the only reason rail is a limitation in the case of the solid rocket boosters is the factory is inland in Utah (just outside the Promontory Summit site famous for the Golden Spike actually), so rail is the best transport option out since there are no waterways to bring a barge up there to carry out bigger boosters. That wasn't so much of an issue with the other rockets being built there (ICBM motors, upper stage boosters, etc.) but the shuttle boosters push the limit of what rail transport can do. Any bigger motors would need basically to relocate the factory to another site with water access instead. Another transportation alternative, SpaceX's California factory ships Falcon 9's via road. The entire booster is loaded up on a truck as a high and wide load then shipped on the highway. Their Starship rockets though are built on a factory at the launch pad though, since they are so big they can't fit on anything really other than really slow trucks that move them from factory to pad.
I spent part of NYE debating the merits of different railway gauges (I’m sure this comes as no surprise) - and the very next day you had the perfect video illustrate this! Another cracking vid 😊
Thanks Paul. That clarifies the origin of standard gauge for me. I always thought that the Roman hypothesis was a bit of a horse's arse. Now we know the inventor has no idea why he chose it - problem solved! Yes life's like that, a bit random at times. The subsequent ½" addition for binding tolerance seems logical. I like your recent investigative format videos. Very enjoyable. Thanks!
I remember flipping through a North American railway industry magazine and coming across an article about missed opportunities in the history of railroading in NA. One was failing to abandon the current gauge early on for a six foot gauge. Citing the inability to increase the carrying capacity of rail corridors.
new build HSR systems are almost all standard gauge despite being able to pick anything so the benefits don't seem super exciting. the US also improved capacity without changing the rail gauge by making the loading gauge taller for bilevels and double stacks.
Here in NZ they use narrow 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in) gauge, due to the mountainous terrain, Some parts of Australia use it and I think Japan also uses this gauge.
In the US there is a good story about how over a 48 hour period in 1886 the 5 foot railroad gauge used in the South was converted to the standard gauge used in the rest of the country. I'm not sure how many 10s of thousands of miles of track that was, but the affected area was well over half a million square miles (1.3 million sq.km).
Initially the southern 5' gauge was converted to 4'9". That's the gauge of the railway most southern rrs connected to, the Pennsylvania rr and its precursors. Only later when the PRR moved to 4'81/2", did the rrs of the south do so.
I thought the south had multiple gauges, not just one, and that was part of the logistical problems during the Civil War. Anyhow, when time came to switch gauges, the ENTIRE south did it in 24 hours. Has to be true, I saw it on youtube.
@@edcew8236 Lol no. Some companies like the L&N for instance switched in the 1870s. The drop dead date was in 1886 for all the companies that hadn't changed over before that, and there was quite a scramble even with some companies choosing to transition before 1886. As for the multiple gauges, it doesn't seem that way. It looks like the big Southern railroads had settled on 5ft. That doesn't mean some of the smaller companies didn't have different gauges though.
@Odin029 They did _tons_ of prep work in the months beforehand, too, to be able to make the change so quickly. Ties had extra nails added on the side to be widened, to save some work on those two days. Locomotives and railcars had to be modified or replaced, with any replacements ready to roll at the changeover. Workers and supplies had to be in place before work started, since they couldn't ship any on tracks that were still being worked on _during_ the work. And so on. I'd imagine some railroads took it as an opportunity for major upgrades to track and equipment too, much like how a lot of 1990s companies and institutions did major computer tech upgrades during their Y2K bug fixes.
Also true to say it's easier and cheaper to move one of two rails in and leave a gap between and particularly at the stations than move the rails apart and consequently have to move buildings, infrastructure and buy extra land to enable it
I suspect (from recollection of photographs and history of the railways) there was a three rail system in use for a long time, with narrow gauge inside the full GWR gauge. The conversion was mostly removal of GWR gauge locos and stock followed by a slow removal of the wide rail and realignment of the standard gauge a little bit. Tidying up point works, island platforms etc. took a while longer. And yes, getting the narrow gauge converted to broad gauge would have involved effort and cost not perceived to have commercial value at the time. But op north all is perfect all t time.
Another excellent and informative video, Paul. Couple of minor points. Brunel had been dead for over 30 years before the gauge-change so probably didn’t have too much of a hand in it. The first railways in Spain were designed by British engineers and constructed by Spanish contractors. There is a story (possibly apocryphal) that a gauge of six feet was selected and thus built. Unfortunately, the Catalan foot equated to roughly eleven inches. The Imperial foot had not been specified. I was first told this by the jeffe d’estacion at Malaga and again in Barcelona and Bilbao. Spanish railways have overcome the difference in gauge between Iberian and standard by a rather terrifying system which alters the effective axle length by physicalling pushing in or pulling out each wheel as the train trundles through the change shed without stopping. Keep up the good work.
Conceptually the wheels on broad gauge rolling stock went on the sides rather than underneath. For the locomotive you could have the big wheels either side of the boiler which was not possible on standard gauge with a decent sized boiler.
Yep - even worse on 3'6" for boilers. Hence all those inventive engines. Articulated Beyer-Garrets. Welsh Fairlie. Narrow decapods with some wheels with no flanges. All to deal with that very issue on narrow gauges. Then on 4'8.5" articulated front and trailing bogies / trucks. Classic 4-6-4!
The ‘Bridge Rail’ was widely reused as fence posts and is still quite common if you scramble about in the undergrowth. It was originally used for both broad gauge and standard gauge track but was not the earliest broad gauge type used by the GWR; which was similar to Barlow rail, samples of which are still in situ at Chippenham Station forecourt as former gate posts.
Great video! I think one aspect of the gauge you did not take into account is cost of construction. With Brunel's gauge, you will by paying 50% or more for every track mile you constructed. Think about a viaduct or a tunnel being 50% wider, how much more time, material, and engineering would that require? How may more routes would simply be off the table because the terrain would not accept such a large gauge? In America, there was a narrow gauge as well as standard; however, it was prevalent in the West for extracting mineral wealth or timber. The bonus for narrow gauge was the cheaper cost of constructing a railroad that may only exist for a couple dozen years. In addition, narrow gauge used the wonderfully asymmetrical Shay locomotive that had far greater tractive effort than contemporary steam engines.
There's narrow guage in Europe too on mountain railways, one even has a separate funicular to link stations below and above a steep glacial valley side with the mountain slopes. Of course narrowing broad guage was far cheaper than any project widening lines, bridges and tunnels.
Not exactly so. the gauge the rails might be wider but the cars they carry would remain the same width. That width, not the gauge width, is what sets those parameters. The only cost difference I can see would be the length of the ties (sleepers)
@@terencerucker3244 Brunel's railway was actually built for wider rolling stock. Furthermore despite a standard guage the early adoption in the UK means larger continental size carriages would require new lines and platforms. So standardisation to the "better" Brunel standard would have been impossibly expensive.
@@terencerucker3244 Yes and no, they did use different loading guages too, a standard gauge rail car is not 7ft wide: "In addition the wider gauge allowed for larger goods wagons and thus greater freight capacity." Yes, you could in theory take Brunel's loading guage stock, stick standard guage bogeys and have the overhangs like you do for full loading guage stock on a narrow guage railway. But the key here, is a. the other way, we end up having to widen the railway all the way down as the loading guage follows the guage: "Until the advent of the ISO rectangular container the biggest things on the railways were passenger carriages, on the GWR broad gauge lines some main line coaches were built that were about ten feet wide, at the opposite end of the scale were lines such as the SECR where coaches were typically only eight feet wide" "When the GWR changed from broad gauge to standard gauge their generous clearances often allowed a second track to be run into goods sheds and a third line to be run through double tracked stations on former broad gauge lines. When they switched to standard gauge however they adopted a smaller loading gauge similar to other main line railways and built most of their stock to this smaller gauge to allow through running."
Thanks for getting up to your neck in mud and researching into why Standard gauge is 4ft 8.5 inches and proving what the Romans have not done for us! I look forward to any other railway or canal content as it is great to see what solutions these early British engineering pioneers created to overcome unique challenges!
I'm not convinced that this (interesting) video DOES disprove the idea that the Romans (or anyone drawing anything with a horse) were ultimately responsible for this gauge - roughly. Paul suggests that Stephenson derived his gauge from existing plateways etc. that used horse-drawn rolling stock for which (presumably) the rear end of a horse was a major design factor, and his gauge with its legacy heritage won out over Brunel's more innovative one.
@@nigelmurphy6761 The International Railways Association decided to make 1435 mm, the International standard back in 1937. However this does not include great land mass countries such as the Soviet Union who decided to use the 1520mm, this was preferred gauge to stop invading armies using their Railways against them!
Excellent video and a very good explanation of how we got to 4’8.5”. I think it was the author Adrian Vaughan who suggested that the reason Brunel went for 7’ was because the the assumption was that the loco’s boiler had to fit between the frames to avoid instability. Thus a wider gauge meant bigger boiler capacity and longer/faster runs without the need to stop. Add to that the bogie had yet to be developed so coaches and wagons were 4-wheels only (a wheel at each corner) so they had to be short in length. A wider gauge meant greater payload/passengers per vehicle. The Ffestiniog was the first railway to use bogie coaches but that wasn’t until the 1870s. Perhaps if bogies been thought of sooner then gauges would have been even smaller. Best wishes to all.
Until the gauge to carriage ratio becomes unstable. Also one reason for even the 2' gague was to deduce costs of earth works and bridges. So carriages were narrow to get though the cuttings etc.
Finally a proper explanation of the standard gauge origins. I have looked information all around but this is the first time after years that I can hear an answer that makes sense!
The semi-conical profile of railroad wheels is also a remarkable engineering design feature. It keeps the flanges from rubbing against the rail without a single additional part.
@@johndododoe1411- The tires are necessary regardless of the wheel profile. My point is that, by making the profile semi-conical, a railroad wheel rolls with minimal flange-rail contact, without adding a single moving part. It's an elegant solution, and it probably appeared early in the development of railroad technology--perhaps about the time when steam locomotives started moving the cars instead of animals and/or people, because once steam power was available, flange-rail contact would have become a serious source of friction and a potential derailment cause. Even before the Stockton & Darlington opened, steam railways were pulling long coal trains at 15 MPH.
It seems to me that Brunel was interested in the luxury express traffic of the day, but Stephenson was following the industrial application of railways. It was inevitable that the lower cost design would have greater appeal, when many lines were marginally economical to build and run.
Nah, 7' gauge had advantages for heavy freight too . Every foot of extra width increases the freight capacity by about 20% . 7'¾" has 50% more capacity than 4'8½" .
The Washington DC Metro was plagued with an increase in derailment events. And funnily enough the cause is RR gauge. And that was in 2017, and fixing the issue still ongoing. A new fleet of passenger cars were inspected and the axle assemblies were ‘out of specification’. Notably DC Metro uses 4’ 8.25” gauge. The 7000 series of cars manufactured by Kawasaki were found to have axles with wheel flange gauge ‘out of spec’. So gauge matters!! Even 1/4” when it’s a fleet of cars and miles of track. Especially at the switches.
Even more. Sony would not license thier system to other makers. JVC did. So when you went into a shop you had umpteen VHS models and only Sony models for Beta. Bit like Apple v Microsoft.
Happy New Year!! Interesting video and a great walk too plus a culvert, a great way to start the new year. Down my way we have dual gauge on the mainline, a mix of Iberian broad gauge together with the standard gauge for the AVE HST, that arrived a few years ago. The line was originally built by a British Company, The Granada Railway Company Limited. They are currently commissioning a gauge changing machine so that stock can run on either gauges. If you look at the track quickly it looks like 3 rail on the Southern Region!! All the best!!
(I tried to reply to someone else who made the same comment, but maybe I hit the wrong key and TH-cam sent me off to nowhere!) At about 13:15, he says 108 Billion, but the number on the screen is 108 Million, which seems much more reasonable.
@@johnsantos1738 I tried Bank of England inflation calculator. Came out with approx 78.8 million! Anyways, quite a bit of dosh I suppose, then and now.
7:45 A similar widening of gauge happened later in Dresden and Leipzig, both Germany. When they laid out their respective tramway tracks, they used standard sleepers for 1435 mm/4'8.5" rails. But to allow for paving the space between the rails, they used a different type of rail heads with a slit for the flange to roll in. This sightly offset the center of the railhead to the outside to allow for the side rail on the inside. And now, Dresden tram has 1450 mm gauge, and Leipzig tram has 1458 mm gauge, both not found anywhere else in the world.
Here in NZ the standard gauge is 1067 mm or 36 inches. Tight but we're a long steep windy country. Lots of them closed now too, being transformed into beautiful cycle tracks along the original routes
9:38 - Part of the reason that this dual gauge switch is such a mess is that the standard gauge on the straight route is changing from the near side to the far side, right in the middle of the switch. It takes a twisted mind to do this in the middle of the switch, rather than a few feet to the right of the switch.
I read once that Brunel's 7 foot gauge failed because other private companies preferred the narrower gauge because using the broad gauge required the purchase of a lot more land to lay the tracks. Brunel gave up and changed his rails to be compatible with everyone else.
Standard gauge is at about the sweet spot for cost of operation and construction against what you can carry. Narrower gauges are cheaper to construct but the amount that can be carried rapidly decreases. So they tend only to be used for lighter traffic flows, in hilly areas where their ability to use sharp curves is useful. With broader gauges the cost of construction increases exponentially, and curves have to be less tight making planning a route more difficult as wider gauge wheel sets do not corner as well. Also back in the days when everything was carried by rail a great big broad gauge wagon with a couple of tons of goods in it was inefficient.
The US had primarily two different track gauges until May 31, 1886 when a two day mass conversion changed all interconnected track gauges to four feet, eight and a half inches. Preparatory work was done in advance to minimize the effort required over the change days. Prior to the change the Union states had adopted standard gauge while the Confederate states chose five feet. After the war between the states was settled, it was another 20+ years before railroad gauges were reconciled. The Union states had more than twice the track length of the former Confederate states, which is why standard gauge was picked. At the change-over time, 9,000 miles of track and large number of rolling stock and engines were converted to standard gauge in just two days, but only with many months of preparation making it possible.
Standard gauge also proves to be a good compromise for curve radii. The wider the gauge the greater the radius of curves has to be to prevent wheel skidding and track/rolling stock wear. The flanges of the wheels are not meant to contact the rails. The wheels have a conical section that self-centres in the rails. As the train goes round a curve the wheels shift to the outside of the curve and the outer wheel rides on a wider section of the wheel while the inner wheel rides at a smaller diameter. It is all worked out to minimize wear and screeching.
I know that you are dealing with the UK, and that you may have already covered this aspect in other viedos.... but in the US standard gauge and narrow gauge(s) were the one's that were really in competition. As you said the wider the gauge the more stability it provides and potentially higher speeds. However the narrower the gauge the smaller the radius required for a curve to be safely traveled... and less land cleared/ leveled. I don't know if that came into the consideration for the UK However in the US with the Appalachians mountain range being relatively close to the coast , and the time frame that the rail roads were expanding at least initially the narrow gauge was cheaper to lay in many areas of the mountains and standard gauge was better for the higher volume/ higher speed population centers and flatter areas. My point is that whether the end result was 4' or 5' the approximate width of standard gauge is generally a good compromise between the cost of land and the resources to prepare it and the overall capability of the finished system in terms of speed, load stability, and initial cost. Which though totally unrelated in the development process is likely why coincidentally they seem to mimic the width of Roman cart/wagon.... or to borrow a term from biology convergent evolution.
That bit about what amounts to convergent evolution is a good point. And maybe it ultimately amounts to just another way of saying that money makes a lot of your decisions for you.
very interesting. a few months ago, I took a ride on the mariazellerbahn, a 91km long narrow gauge railway in austria, which is in regular passenger operation and received a major upgrade a few years ago. the history behind using 760mm in austria and the balkans could be interesting aswell, since that gauge is closely connected to the austro hungarian military, which constructed such lines for military goods transportation and later handed it over to civilian operators.
The issue for Australia's many gauges stem from the fact that prior to 1901, when Australia became a country, the future states were run more like colonies. No real attempt was made to connect to other colonies via rail, and so the choice of gauge was litetally left up to the engineer ( usually from the UK, where at the time there was a plethora of gauges) as to what gauge to lay, to get the resources to the ships for shipping it around the world.
I suppose as well , many railways began as isolated projects - never envisioned as part of a broader statewide or event nationwide network , so the best gauge to suit individual projects or just the gauge the engineers were used to building would
In the antebellum American South and for a period of time afterwards there was no standardization of railroad gauges. Something the North had figured out early on. Which the North used to good advantage during the ACW.
Thanks! Sometimes I wonder about the arbitrariness of these engineering decisions. Reminds me of my cousin telling me how she learned to cook a roast from her mother: her mother cut each end off so that is what she did with her roasts. Only years later she found out that was so the roast would fit in the pan
During the interregnum the 7 foot gauge had a 4’81/2” rail added and thus some of the old stock and engines were better able to work out their lives. There was also the point that in the time of Railway Mania the sheer cost of the 7 foot gauge was much higher in terms of land acquisition. The construction was different as well as the 7 foot gauge rested on length wise planking not the cross ties of the smaller gauge though the length planks could be periodically cross fastened.
An interesting vlog, well researched. In the 1980s, British Rail (BR) had issues with modern stock "hunting" on continuously welded rail (CWR). The BR Research Department found that reducing the gauge to 4' 8 3/8" stopped the hunting. However, unfortunately several derailments of freight trains occurred on CWR. It was proven that the 1/8" difference in gauge was the cause, so BR went back to 4' 8 1/2" for all track and instead looked at changing the wheel profile on modern stock. As a point of interest, the track gauge was sometimes increased on tight curves to allow better transit of wheel sets, for example areas like Borough Market Junction.
I read an article written by an engineer many years ago. He said that the width of Roman chariot wheels was not determined by the width of the horses. That measurement can vary by the size of the horse and the person making the measurement. The accepted length of a cubit is 18-inches. If you take a wheel one cubit in diameter and turn it one revolution, its circumference would be 56.52-inches. That would be a very accurate measurement at the time. After all, .020-inches would be about the thickness of 5-sheets of paper. Measuring wheels would also have markings on them to indicate shorter distances. A yard is a double cubit. It has been an age-old practice to measure distance by counting revolutions of a wheel. Even our early settlers heading west had an odometer (road meter) attached to their wagon wheels to measure distance. There were no tape measurers, so early carpenters carried a measuring wheel to mark off distance. Measuring wheels can be purchased at any big box home center.
The three main railway gauges in Australia are narrow: 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in), standard: 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in), and broad: 1,600 mm (5 ft 3 in). Light rail for Sugar Cane harvesting uses 610 mm (2 ft).
@@DemPilafian a lot of us more efficient Australians are still old school and are more comfortable with Imperial measurement than with new school Metric. Feet, Inches, Yards, Chains and Furlongs seem more real than ten times ten times ten times ten what-Evers.
@@Blackwater_House Australia successfully metricated very quickly back in the early 1970s. If you are truly more comfortable with imperial units you are literally already retired. The good thing about being retired is that you have plenty of time to post meaningless garbage on YT.
@@DemPilafian I am almost 68 years old, Blind as a Bat, Deaf as a Post and Pig Ignorant; so your Opinion of Me has about the same value as a Mountain of Molehills. But I am pleased that you were able to express yourself so Eloquently in this forum. Best Wishes for 2000 & 24.
@@DemPilafian How do you measure car wheel sizes in Australia? Pilots use feet, knots and nautical miles. Pipe thread is BSP (British standard pipe) like much of the World apart from the US. The base unit is 1 which is 1 inch, 1/2 etc.
Very well done and your explanation of how standard gauge came into being was done in such a way to make it interesting. Not boring at all! Another hit for Paul!
A couple notes on gauge... 1. Stability - In the US, double stack container car loads are limited to 20 feet 2 inches height (!), running on 4' 8-1/2" gauge. They don't tip over very often. South Africa runs express trains on 3' 6" gauge. Brunel made a bad assumption about stability. 2. Changing gauge - on wooden ties, it's easy to convert from broad gauge to standard gauge by boring new holes in the ties. Changing from standard gauge to broad gauge would require replacing all the ties with longer ones. The government did something right for once.
I just found that maximum height is "Doublestack 4" = 20' 3" instead of "Doublestack 3+ = 20' 2". One inch difference to handle the taller containers at 2 high. Maximum width is 9' 11".
Much easier to reduce the gauge, I wonder how long it would take and how much if the commission decided Brunels gauge would be the standard 😮 great production as always, thank you.
@@user-du9oy4cp1q He's asking how much time, effort and money it would take, to convert the UK's gauge to Brunel's 7' gauge if his gauge was to become the defacto standard.
I come from a broad guage town. Adelaide South Australia. All our metro lines are 5 ft 3" . As were all our country lines as well. Though very few of those left now as the Govt did not want to maintain them. So hundreds of trucks tearing up the roads now. And that is just grain let alone other commodities. Go to sunnt Qld [underwater today] and they still have 3'6". As does the very little line left in Tasmania. Not so long ago passengers had to change trains in Pt Pirie to north or west. All standard guage now. There is still a turntable in Peterborough to turn all 3 guages. Not in use now,, nor is the towns large rail yards.
The BART system in California uses a less common 5’ 6” gauge. This was selected as the best way to ensure the cars, which were designed to be much lighter than other rail cars, would remain stable in the face of high winds at several points on the planned network (including a line across the Bay Bridge which never happened).
BART has a lot of design strangeness in general. until recently they used cylindrical profile wheels with no taper, which is common on streetcars, but not at all common for the subway-type system they actually built. allegedly the design consultants were from chicago where L trains have cylindrical wheels to deal with tight curves on the loop.
That was a biiig mistake. As at present, BART cannot expand over existing lines or right of ways, and because of that at present there is a standard gauge diesel connector.
Stephenson was contracted to build the Stockton and Darlington Railway, will before the Liverpool and Manchester, Bolton and Leith. It was on the S&D R and the Mines Railways he discovered the binding and increased the Gauge by Half an Inch
@@pwhitewick they would have specified 4’ 8”, but Stephenson would have built at 4’ 8.5”, because Stephenson already knew about the binding and the need to increase the gauge by half an inch, as he had already done so on the S&D R. Why do you think there was no binding on the S&D R. After all the S&D R opened in 27th September 1825. The Bolton & Leigh Railway opened in 1st August 1828 almost 3 years after the S&D R. The Manchester & Liverpool opened almost 5 years to the day after the S&D R, 15th September 1830.
Thanks Paul. A minor correction. At 0:44 you said 4' 8.5" in the UK. Not true - only in the GB part of the UK of GB and NI. In NI, all of Ireland in fact, the gauge is 5' 3" - and there's another story.
So-called Irish gauge was only JUST bigger than Standard. Hence British Rail were able to sell some uk stock by simply re-working the wheels, axles and bogies to suit.
@@armstrongleworthy5420 In Auckland, NZ, for the last decade of diesel-hauled trains (before they electrified) the carriages were refurbished BR Mark 2's on 3'6" bogies. We also had some diesel multiple units form Perth, West Australia, surplus from when they electrified.
@@ScottEvans-vk7hse That is a 2 foot gauge (2'), you originally typed 2 inch (2").😇 Wasn't sure if it was a typo, or Tasmanian mines were using Lionel Standard Gauge Trains! 🤔
Thanks for bringing another video covering a subject which I might not have sought out, but having watched has stirred my interest. Good to see info given in quiet and comforatable format. Happy New Year to you and yours
Nice to learn the truth! Here in Australia we started off with each independent state developing the railway systems before Federation. We ended up with multiple gauges. Mainly 3'6", 4'8.5" and 5'3". Why? 1. Some states would agree on a gauge and then one would have a change of government. The new govt would reneg on the agreement AFTER the other state had started. 2. The cost difference wasn't just the width of the sleeper. Narrow gauge lines cost far less in infrastructure (cuttings, tunnels, bridges) because they could better follow the contour of the land. One cost estimate for one mainline was a factor of 8 times, simply because of the land's variations. Even a single state could use different gauges for different lines depending upon many factors. In my own South Australia we even had some towns with all three main gauges at the one station! The broad gauge was used by American Webb because the state government requested the best. Nearly sent the state bankrupt! The narrow gauge decided upon by the Federal government for the line to Alice Springs (cheapest option to fulfil a Federation agreement) and eventually decades later, standard gauge by the Federal government to get rid of all the changes in gauge. Queensland still uses and builds narrow gauge. The Ghan does not go there and technically The Indian Pacific does not either. Of course we did get good at gauge changes. Bogey exchange sheds were built. Simply use the same carriages / wagons etc. Lift up the carriage/wagon/van, , slide out one bogey gauge, side in another and lower back down. Only had to change the engine. We even had some dual gauge track too.
Another cool thing is that the wheels are conical, not cylindrical. This allows them to self center and for the wheels on a fixed axle to not squeal or slip when going round a curve
The U.S. and the UK use the same track gauge, but the loading gauges are definitely very different, that's for sure. The U.S. has the heaviest loading gauge you will find basicaly, which allowed for supermassive locomotives like the Big Boy and the Yellowstones to exist. Of course, the UK had very different priorities from those of the U.S., though, and simply didn't need such massive locomotives or the need to have such tall height clearances commonly found on U.S. railroads.
Before 1918 Poland ran mostly on standard gauge but in the east there were a lot of lines using Russian broad gauge. After WW1 these broad gauges were often changed to standard, only to be revertrd to broad gauge once Soviet Union invaded and occupied eastern half of the country in WW2. During the war the rail gauge was being changed back and forth many times depending on where the front line was and only after the war ended all but one line connecting to Ukraine were changed to standard. This one remaining broad gauge line was mostly used for transporting coal but after Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 it proved very useful for military shipments because it allows the trains to cross the border without stopping.
The broad gauge rails are known as "top hat" rail because of it's sectional shape. Another meeting of gauge differences is to be seen at Canfranc in northern Spain, French standard gauge meeting Spanish broad gauge, the station, longer than the Titanic, was a failure due to the man handling of goods from one platform to another. Went there a few years ago when it was in a very poor state, it's now a hotel I believe.
@@allangibson8494 no. A train derailment in 1970. Still, the big building was not being used by then in full capacity, and after most of the French line closed, it was finally abandoned. Only recently it reopened, and a new station on the former goods yard was opened.
@@tobythehairlessdog8876 The rail section wasn’t gauge specific. Bridge rail was used for standard gauge too. Double headed rail was used too (but required special chairs at each sleeper).
I liked the video but everyone will tell you that you missed their favourite aspect of the gauge wars. I will throw in my "twopence": Larger gauge lines are more expensive to build and maintain. This is not a problem for a heavily used line like London to Bristol. For a rural branch line struggling to be profitable this is another nail in the coffin. The bigger the gauge the larger the minimum practical radius of curves. This is not a problem on a line which is on reasonably flat terrain but becomes a problem on lines which thread their way through steep sided valleys and mountain passes. The only solution becomes more tunnels and other earthworks (which have to be wider for a broader gauge). Narrower gauge lines are usually slow because faster trains will be unstable. Around the world, mountainous areas often have narrow gauge feeder lines and wider main lines. Brunel's gauge was seven foot and one quarter inch. The quarter inch was added for the same reason Stephenson added a half-inch to his. If you build track and rolling stock to the same gauge they will bind going around corners. Modern railways tend to "ease" (expand) the gauge even more on curves. Just my thoughts.
Nowadays they have greasing devices on tight curves to prevent binding. There's one just to the south of the Ribblehead viaduct, the only one I've ever seen. You can see it from the station platform.
A tiny crumb of comfort for West Country, The SW Coast and South Wales inhabitants is that in the wake of this early "Get rid of Concorde" backward stumble down to ahem, narrow / standard gauge; we're blessed with wider tunnels, more spacious separation of high speed trains and so on. A whiff of the amazing forethought of the fella remains and is of benefit to we poor benighted express commuters.
I only found out last week why the wheels on the trucks have a taper, really clever those Victorian engineers, also thinking about tunnels and bridges would be difficult to convert to the wider gauge wider tunnels wider bridges possibly
The wider it is, the more stable it is and the more weight it can carry. The narrower it is, the better it corners. The American mining industry still uses predominantly a 3' 6" gauge for their rail, and several rail lines through mountainous regions use 3', although most of these are for tourism purposes only at this point. There were even some that went as narrow as 2'. With modern materials for rails and sleepers, the standard gauge is a good compromise between carrying capacity and cornering, so it makes a lot of sense to just use the one width pretty much everywhere unless some significant engineering consideration dictates otherwise.
The "measuring in the center of the rail head" thing also lead to the odd Italian meter gauge, which in fact is 950 mm. France used to define 4' 8.5" as "1500 mm" (measured in the center) for a while. Standard rolling stock was used though.
I think a fascinating example for a country sticking to another gauge than standard is Japan. The mountainous terrain and its need for tighter curves was perfect for the smaller gauge they still use. They only adapted for standard on the Shinkansen lines which are flat and straight. Fascinating video on railway history. Germany also hat several gauges used parallel. Back then of course it wasn't Germany at all and every little Kingdom, Duchy and Principality had it's own railway company and also it's own gauge. I wonder why we adapted the English standard. ^^
Spain and Portugal still use the wider Iberian gauge for most of their trains, but Spain's high-speed network is standard gauge to interoperate better with the rest of Europe. But now they've got some trains with variable-gauge axles which can actually switch between the two, with special gauge-changing equipment on the track. One of the oddest ones to me is the Washington, DC Metro, which is 4' 8 1/4". That quarter-inch shaved off from standard gauge is because they're using less conical flanged wheels, to reduce hunting oscillations at the cost of more squealing on the curves. Meanwhile, Boston's MBTA is standard gauge but it recently came out that the new Green Line Extension was accidentally built to slightly incorrect gauge, causing all kinds of problems.
Japan is fascinating. Apart from the Shinkansen lines, there are also railway companies and tramways that run standard gauge, a total of 2,600 route miles. There is even 60 miles of "Scotch" 4 foot 6 inch gauge on two interlinked Tokyo commuter lines and the Sapporo tram network. And 30 miles of electrified 2 foot 6 inch gauge.
Note that Japan has a much wider loading gauge on high speed lines, mainly I believe because the slab track they use is much more stable. They also have trains that automatically stop in an earthquake.
Japan historically used 3'6" for the former JNR network, and many private companies used the same gauge, although others (including some subways) used 4'8.5". 3'6" sounds sensible in Imperial, but its a rather odd 1067mm in metric! I'm not sure why the narrow gauge was chosen - presumably they didn't anticipate the amazing industrial growth in the 20th Century. Yes, there is lots of mountainous terrain, but the cities are usually on coastal plains, where a narrow gauge is unnecessary. But as has been mentioned, the loading gauge for most Japanese trains is huge - it seems rather odd to think that some of the huge 15-car long distance commuter trains - sometimes including a couple of double deck cars - all packed to capacity - are narrow gauge trains! Its interesting that where a free choice of gauge could be made - eg Shinkansen, Chinese high speed rail - govts have stuck to 4'8.5" rather than any wider gauge, even at seriously high speeds. Again Shinkansen are far wider than UK stock, seating 5 across (+aisle) comfortably.
@@timbounds7190 In terms of 'narrow gauge' there are two widespread gauges - metre gauge and 3'6" gauge. 3'6" is in use in Japan, New Zealand, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania, South Africa and Zimbabwe, and others. Metre gauge is in use in Europe (e.g. northern Spain, CFP in south of France, Switzerland - notably Rhaetian Railways), east Africa, Brazil, Bolivia and others.
From Wikipedia on Australian railway gauges: Until the 1880s, the gauge issue was not a major problem, as there were no connections between the separate systems. The focus of railway traffic was movement from the hinterland to the ports and cities on the coast, so governments were not concerned about the future need for either inter-city passenger or freight services. It was not until 1883 when the broad and standard gauge lines from Melbourne and Sydney met at Albury, and in 1888, narrow and standard gauge from Brisbane and Sydney met at Wallangarra that the break of gauge became an issue. It needs to be remembered, that until Federation (1901) the benefits of a uniform gauge were not immediately apparent, as passengers would have to pass through customs and immigration at the intercolonial border, meaning that all goods would have to be removed for customs inspection. It was only with Federation in 1901, and the introduction of free trade between the states, that the impediment of different gauges became apparent.
Super video. Glad to be corrected on the ‘Horses Arse’ explanation. Although, that has spoiled a good tale about the size of the space shuttle engines that I used to illustrate how you need to keep pushing to get to the real cause of events. Still, I may still keep using it…
The only thing I remember about how Stephenson chose his guage was what I read in a history book at school. In deciding the track width of his engine Stephenson measured the axles of numerous carts being used on the roads of the time. I presume most of these would have been horse drawn. He then took the average and settled on that figure, which turned out to be 4ft 8 1/2in. Whether this is true or not, I have no way of telling because I also heard (don't know where) that this gauge was the best at stopping the engine from tipping over on a bend. Did he not leave any notes?
@martinhawes5647 He may have not remembered, but it was obvious that he worked in mines where the gauge for the horse-drawn carts was 4ft, with some varying to 4ft 71/2in, whilst other mines in the North of England used wider gauge. I suspect that he may have taken note of what worked and what didn't, and went with what did. Cost and time could well have come into his reasoning, as these two factors always have a bearing on any engineering enterprise. But, we'll never know.
@@majorbruster5916Video has a more plausible explanation of running his 4'8" gauge on the same lines as the old 5' carts by making the outside of the 2" rails fit the old carts . Then the ½' was added to work better in curves after the 5' carts were gone .
As indicated in your video, and comments from other viewers, Australians have had a thing for railway gauges and it was a topic for long conversations and debate for a century and half. Not just by railway buffs. We even created a game around Victoria's broad gauge called Trugo. Played with a mallet and buffer rings from a railway carriage, the courts are 90 ft long, representing 2 x 45ft spans of rail, with a width of 5ft 9, the 5ft 3in gauge with 3 inches either side symbolising the rails. The game is almost exclusively played in Victoria, the state with the 5ft 3in gauge.
Yes, we should make South Australia a Trugo state as well. I'm currently writing a history on the sport and It is interesting that, to my knowledge, there was never an attempt to introduce it to South Australia@@johnwinter6061
Sorry to hear about Hattons, I wasn’t a big buyer from them but they did supply me a few rarities. With their own designs, eg the Genesis coaches, I hope they can realise some value by selling on the IP rights and designs. The other thing that could be sold, hosted or picked up by someone would be the Hattons Directory, which is a great resource that clearly has had a lot of work go into it.
The back end of a horse requires a harness about 4'8". So when pits started using horses to pull coal drams, although there was no standard they all ended up using roughly that gauge as being the most efficient.. When Stephenson started his locomotive works he stuck with the 4'8" of his local tramway, he was the largest locomotive manufacturer in the world, so set the de-facto standard.
@@Mortimer50145 Paul explained it. Having the flange gauge and the rail gauge the same meant that the flanges bound up against the rails on curves, so Stephenson nudged the rail gauge out 1/2".
@@Mortimer50145 Adding the extra 1/2" gives you about 1 per cent tolerance for oversize axles as mentioned in the video. Undersize axles were accommodated by the flat of the wheels.
@philldavies7940 Not true. The gauge has absolutely nothing to do with the back end of a horse. There were many different gauges at the time ranging from 3'0" to 5'0". The track was level with the ground, so resembled more of a tramway than a model railway. 4'8" just happened to be the gauge of Killingworth Colliery where Stephenson was employed. Ig he had used the gauge of Wylam Waggonway which ran just outside the front door of the cottage where he was born, we might have ended up with 5'.0" standard gauge.
It's sad that Australia has so many gauges. Queensland made a train link between Sydney and Brisbane difficult. To my knowledge, the dual gauge line between the NSW border and Brisbane central is the only one in Queensland, with all the other lines being narrow gauge. Another country worth mentioning is Japan, where all the local lines are narrow gauge, while the bullet train lines are standard gauge. To run the Shinkansen to Yamagata, they had to build a dual-gauge track where it's a rare example of a bullet train and local train sharing the same line.
Great video. I watched a program years ago on the two "titans" of railway "battling" it out, building railways and incredible bridges. (In fact, they were friends.) Brunel thought the trains were rather rough to ride, so he had Charles Babbage make a machine to measure how much they shook. This is often considered an early diagnostic test machine. Brunel settled on 7 ft. It was a much smoother ride. I do wonder, in the great alternate "What if..." universe, if they had the foresight to switch to 7 ft, how much more (people and freight) could have been transported with fewer cars, and a lot less bouncing around. Short term gain will almost always win out when the payoff is further down the road.
Odd because while Brunel was a genius in many ways his railway track was very poor. Much too stiff for early trains that had very little in the way of suspension. So probably rode rougher than standard gauge track which tended to be built with cross sleepers as is done to this day.
@@meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee2 What I do recall from the program - taking it at face value - his trains were smoother according to Babbage's tests. Otherwise, yes. Brunel and his competitor (his name escapes me) were geniuses and friends, which came in handy later when Brunel came under attack by his detractors. Their bridges were unique, ingenious feats of engineering, and still in use today. Beyond that I can't say. As much as I like trains, there are other things that capture my attention. Blasphemy. I know. 😧
Mr W. you missed a trick... Rather than telling people again why chariots are nothing to do with the current gauge... put a link for others to click on to watch that video!
@@scottanos9981 Broad gauge (5' 3"): Victoria, and a little in South Australia. Standard gauge (4' 8½"): New South Wales, South Australia, Northern Territory, Western Australia, and some in Victoria. Narrow gauge ( 3' 6"): Queensland, Tasmania, and a little in Western Australia.
Thanks for yet another interesting video. I think that 'The cart track theory' was to do with the size that the wagon builders were already capable of. Cheers from an unfortunately rail free Bali.
Australia is more frustrating rather than interesting. Here in Adelaide the local rail is 5'3'' but interstate lines are standard gauge so it's difficult to link up regional towns by rail with Adelaide
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I worked for one of the largest U.S. railroads for 40 years in the Engineering Department (Track). The thing about gauge is this, it's very hard to keep track within specifications. You think you lay your rail at 56-1/2" and it just stays there. NOPE! On curves, the high, or outer rail, gets worn due to the wheel wanting to go straight. So with rail wear on curves, and the pressure on the low side rail on slow moving uphill trains, keeping gauge within safe operating standards is a full-time battle. Some people will blame wood cross ties (sleepers in the U.K.) but concrete ties also allow the gauge to spread over time. So we have standards we learn and go by and work very hard to keep the railroad safe for everyone.
Thank hell for Lasers!! Im sure they make your job much more do-able.
U.S. railfan here, C.B. That’s quite a useful datum! Thanks for sharing.
🚂 ❤ 👍
Thanks for the informative comment. Is this particularly a problem for this guage, or would (otherwise practical other than switching costs) gauges suffer less?
Following the civil war in the US, there was a severe problem with non-standard gage tracks in the South. To solve the problem all the narrow guages were made standard on one day. Obviously this required great planning and labor.
A narrower gauge makes for greater speed and efficiency. Two wheels are connected by an axle and there is a tendency for one of the wheels to rotate a little faster and the other a little slower until the faster rotating wheel becomes a little 'stuck' - it doesn't stop. The wheel that was rotation g more slowly then becomes the wheel that was rotating faster and so on ad infinitum. The effect is to introduce greater resistance to forward motion. This resistance is reduced by narrowing the gauge. The most efficient gauge is a monorail, which clearly does not suffer from this problem. See th-cam.com/video/Z8AOfoRmE00/w-d-xo.htmlsi=mAL-NDsCwJyr4tEB
That the gauge of a railway should be similar to the width of a cart is hardly a surprising phenomenon.
My lecturer at Uni told us that 4'8.5" was the distance between a young woman's ankles and her neck so she would lie nicely when you tied her to the rails. I prefer his explanation
"Standards" aren't chosen in a vacuum, as some kind of Platonic ideal, they are chosen/adapted from existing practice sometimes almost unthinkingly. Thank you for the nice exploration of this.
So four-foot-eight-and-a-half evolved from five feet, not from Roman chariots. Five feet, minus four inches for going with flanges, plus half an inch for the binding on curves. Thank you, excellent Stevenson.
OK. Did or did not that five feet come from Roman chariots?
@@TheDavidlloydjonesMy question exactly. This video didn’t address the legacy of the original mining cars. Where did their width come from…?
Well, yea, because they had to focus on other, more pressing issues, like developing safer/better locomotive and designing comfortable carriage for people, etc.
Why spend time and resources thinking about gauge, when there was one around (i.e. the 5' from earlier time). Furthermore, how can you justify why should you pick 7', and not 8' or 6', or whatever?
IMO standards should be this way (defined by practical needs), not set by the academia inside their ivory towers.
@@dogcarmanThe general width of the horse's arse.
@@TheDavidlloydjones
The first 4 feet of a chariot
belong to the horse , of course.
Two additional feet , provided
by the human , function as a
single unit since they are together
upon a platform.
Hence , 1 Chariot = 5 feet.
There ! 🧐
SOLVED !
Makes perfect Horse Sense ,
🙏 Long May They Rein 🙏
Technically, the 4'8.5 inch gauge applies in Britain and not the UK as Northern Ireland uses the Irish gauge of 5'3", set out as the standard gauge for Ireland under the Railway Regulation (Gauge) Act 1846.
Most Scottish gauges in the early years were 4ft6in so I agree with you but only applying to England.
FYI North American gauge 4’ 8.5”
Careful now, there is a rabbit hole opening up there, maybe more than one!
Interestingly, British engineers built many of the railways in Brazil, a lot of them with this “irish” gauge. Standard gauge only became used recently for lightrail so they can buy off the shelf equipment.
So you didn't get the Brexit memo? The U.K. left Northern Ireland behind. Sorry about that.
When I worked on a ranch in the British Columbia interior in the 1990's we put our irrigation pumps on an old railway cart so we could more easily raise and lower them as the river rose and fell. We began to build the sloping wooden track down to the river. The ranch foreman wondered what the Canadian rail gauge was and before he measured the wheels I told him confidently "four-foot eight and a half inches!" Mr. Stephenson's influence reaches far in geography and time indeed!
The Didcot Newbury and Southampton railway- a massively important railway for the movement of all the materiel needed for the D-Day invasion. It was so important that much of it was made into double track in 1942/43 to cope with the increasing traffic. Within twenty years the line would be closed and shortly afterwards a huge container terminal opened in Southampton. This railway should have been the key freight route to the north but it was tossed away and huge sums have been spent in the last few years trying to increase capacity on the existing railways which could have been avoided to a degree by this railway being kept open.
Lord Beeching - whatta guy!
Yes, I travelled the A34 daily a while back and the constant stream of car loaders taking new MINI's, Jaguars and Land-Rovers to the docks in Southampton was awesome. No chance to reopen the railway now. But what a bad decision Beeching made.
I think that closure- first passengers in 1962 and then freight in 1964 was a pre-Beeching move by BR as the Beeching report was published in 1963. In my mind, there was complicity between senior railway management with the Beeching plan. Firstly, there was money to be made from selling off the land- especially, in towns and cities and many lines subsequently closed were still steam hauled and the money from the Modernisation Plan had not replaced steam- much of it was wasted. By shutting lines ( not necessarily this one for freight) steam could be eliminated faster while keeping the lines open meant going back to the government for more money for diesels or electric traction etc which would have been politically impossible. It was a "win/win" for railway management- get rid of problems- get rid of "over-capacity" and have an easier life. Wiki tells us that at its peak, the DN&S had 120 trains a day! I first became interested in it when I walked some of the newly lifted track bed near Winchester in 1966 and a few years later read the railway and travel author George Behrend's classic book "Gone With Regret". He was born at Burghclere on the line and the book was published in 1964- just as it was finally axed and chucked away by shortsighted stupidity- along with thousands more miles of railway. At the very least, the integrity of the closed lines should have been protected for a designated time- but asset-stripping was the main plan.
@@NickRatnieksI’ve always wondered why removal of the track bed and embankments was ever allowed. Even if the line is closed and the rails removed keeping the groundworks intact allowed future unforeseen options. But they were not even able to imagine future possibilities it seems.
Paul did point out that changing the guage to 4' 8 1/2" cost the equivalent of £108 billion today. It almost makes HS2 look cheap.
I laughed when you mentioned Australian railways being a mess, as an Aussie I totally agree with that assessment. New South Wales is 100% standard gauge and always was, Victoria adopted Irish broad gauge for whatever reason and mostly stuck with it (a standard gauge line was added between Wodonga on the Victorian border and Melbourne for through passenger trains in the 80"s), Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland adopted 3 foot 6 inch narrow gauge but loading gauge differs slightly between them, then there's the Trans Continental line which finally standardised on standard gauge in 1973 causing W.A. to have a weird dual gauge system from Kalgoorlie to Perth and S.A. to actually have all 3 gauges with no direct connections between any of them. It was even a topic in Australia before Federation and much more so in the decades after, still took until after WWII for any direct connections between any of the capital cities to happen and is half the reason why most fly between capital cities rather than use trains (the Indian Pacific is just a tourist train now and has been since the late 80's).
NSW, Vic and SA all adopted 5'3" at the instigation of NSW (who had an Irish "chief" engineer). Vic and SA ordered rolling stock. NSW delayed just a little, got a new Scottish engineer, who insisted on 4'8½". This was too late for Vic and SA to change their order, so they stuck with 5'3". The credibility of these early engineers and their decisions are up for debate!
Qld went for 3'6" as it was an underpopulated new colony, was building its first line up the range from Ipswich to Toowoomba, and couldn't afford large curves, or even wide sleepers. Tas started with 5'3", but quickly gained many much narrower gauges (for the short mountain tramways). The Tasmanian Main Line Railway went with 3'6" even though the Government lines were 5'3". But TMLR was bought by the government and because this was the longest line, 3'6" became standard (and made more sense for the terrain). WA was also a poor colony (then) and 3'6" was cheaper. SA also wanted the economy of 3'6". Where Victoria had mountainous terrain, 2'6" was used for a handful of lines.
All states had private tramways/railways at a bewildering number of gauges. Australia-wide, these included: 1'3" (Bronte), 1'4½" (Mt Barker), 1'6" (Weston Park), 1'8" (Sons of Gwalia), 2'0" (Cane railways), 2'1" (Back Creek Slate Mine), 2'2" (Mount Morgan), 2'2¼" (Katoomba), 2'3" (North Head Quarantine), 2'6" (Vic), 2'6½" (Charters Towers Water Board), 2'7" (Kawarren limeworks), 2'8" (Semaphore Jetty), 2'8½" (?), 2'9" (Greta), 2'10" (Mount Pleasant), 3'0" (Powelltown), 3'1" (?), 3'3" (Tin Can Bay), 3'4½" (Rubicon), 3'6" (Cape), 3'6½" (El Caballo Blanco), 3'8½" (Mount Keira), 3'11" (Katoomba Scenic Railway), 4'0" (Kermandie), 4'2" (NSW logging), 4'3" (Latrobe tramway ?), 4'3½" (Latrobe tramway ?), 4'6" (Tatong), 4'8½" (Standard) 5'3" (Irish) 6'0" (Kermandie) as well as 700mm (Appleton Dock), 825mm (Charters Towers), 900mm (SEC Interconnecting), 1m (Hartley Vale), and 9.6m (Australia Telescope).
Melbourne and Adelaide were connected 5'3" in 1886. The standard gauge crept into southern Qld and Sydney and Brisbane were connected 4'8½" in 1930. Yes, WW2 did show the deficiencies in the different gauges. Sydney and Melbourne were connected 4'8½" in 1962. Sydney to Perth via Broken Hill in 1969, Alice Springs to this 4'8½" line in 1980 (reaching Darwin in 2004), and Adelaide in 1983. The Melbourne-Adelaide route was converted to Standard Gauge in 1995 along with much of western Victoria and parts of South Australia. Canberra was connected to Queanbeyan (and Sydney) in 1914.
We still have Queensland, Western Australia, Tamania and much of South Australia as 3'6", most of Victoria, suburban Adelaide, and some other parts of South Australia at 5'3", and all of NSW and the trunk routes between state capitals at 4'8½". Still a lot of cane railways (in Qld) at 2'0". Also several tourist/miniature (etc) railways at odd gauges, even if only for very short lengths.
@@mrewan6221 Credibility -- of two closely related sources of the same information, engineers and engineers' decisions -- is a singular noun. It *is* up for debate.
@@TheDavidlloydjones That's what you got out of it? Your interpretation of a supposed grammar error in something I said?
I disagree with your interpretation. Strip away all the gramitically-irrelevant words: "credibility and decisions are" or "credibility and decisions is"?
Maybe your variety of English has the singular here; mine has the plural.
and New Zealand is 3'6" or 1,067mm throughout the country. (Same as some of the Ausrtralian States)
But Auckland, Otago and Southland provinces started with the British standard of 4' 81/2", and Canterbury 5'3", and I'm not sure about the rest of the country..... but the various provincial govt's were buying in second hand rolling stock and engines from other British colonies, who all had different gauges. Hence, in the beginning, NZ's railway gauges were all over the place.
@@colonelfustercluck486 Yes. NZ has all sorts. I don't think NZ was part of the NSW-Vic-SA-Tas agreement, as it was pretty certain by then that NZ was never going to merge. Australia still held out hope, though; NZ is in the Aus constitution as a possible state, and the streets radiating out from Parl House in Canberra had one resereved for Wellington. The others are named after state capitals. When it was quite clear there would be no State of New Zealand, that street was renamed to Canberra Avenue.
I think one of the most incredible endeavours on changing track gauge was in the Southern states of the US in May/June1886. Over 11,000 miles of track were converted from 5 foot to 4 foot 9 inch gauge in just 36 hours over one weekend. On the Friday, trains were running on Russian gauge and on the Monday on Pennsylvania gauge.
@dariengoodwin southern engineer made vacuum sewage too
You all know why it won!
Its the sexiest gauge by far!
It is not really accurate to call it the Russian gauge a Russia got it from the US. It was suggested by George Washington Whistler.
And then there's the modern alchemy of the Spanish trains.
Not stopping, a button is pressed and bogies lift up, they breathe in, expand symmetrically whirr about a bit and generally enjoy the novelty of fresh air blowing through their innards.
Then quick as a flash, yet still in a regimented manner, wheels axles, bits and bobs come together in a slimmer (or bulkier) looking bogie.
Over and again, all the way along the train. A marvel of modern engineering, it has basically changed its underpants, found that the next pair has a hole in them, replaced those and successfully put on a third pair
_In Public_ no less _whilst jogging down Regent Street_
@@okaro6595 it's not accurate to call the gauge only used in russia "russian" lol ok
Interesting. The Netherlands started out on broad gauge (1945 mm, or 6 ft, 4 inch, and a bit). There was another force for us: international trade and international railway connections. The first bit of standard gauge was a connection to Germany, and eventually standard gauge was demanded by law.
Another point of fact: Brunel never converted the GWR's gauge and probably would've fought it tooth and nail. He died in 1859. GWR converted in 1892.
The main GWR gauge conversion was in the early 1870s. The broad gauge was only retained for through working to the independent companies west of Bristol. But these companies were eventually taken over by the Great Western and it was their lines which were famously converted in 1892 bringing the 7ft gauge completely to an end.
@BB-xx3dv Right after Gooch's death. But was he an opponent or a supporter of abolishing the broad gauge? That is the Q!
Brunel was the son of a French engineer who served under Napoleon and migrated to the UK. He passed his engineering skills down to his son who was - to all intents and purposes - the inheritor of a French engineering tradition. I wonder if Brunel's choice of gauge was influenced by his French background?
But the relevant question is, when did the GWR stop building railways to 7ft gauge? I don't mean extra sidings and track renewals, but as in extending mainlines.
I do know that the GWR kept on having to build new broad gauge locomotives, almost right to the end, owing to replacements needed due to age of equipment and demand. Many were convertible (to standard gauge and indeed were) but some were broad gauge only.
@@kevinmartin8088The Railway Regulation (Gauges) Act of 1846 put a stop to it.
A nice video. Been an ex railway worker on the Birmingham to Oxford line. There was at a time next to the track south of Leamington a couple of feet of seven foot gauge covering the water spill. So you had the 2 standard gauge lines and to the side the Seven foot gauge for a couple of feet.
You have the most en-gauging videos I’ve watched for the last couple of years,love it all,keep up the good work 👍🏻
You should oh-pun a train-ing class! 😉 🖖
@@markcoleman9892 😁
@@markcoleman9892Now that’s a good one.😁
While the Great Western and its allies continued building 7-foot gauge lines, the thing that killed it was that the GWR ended up buying smaller railway companies that were standard gauge - particularly their routes into the Midlands. Thus meant they had a non-standardisation issue within the company and had to build mixed gauge lines into Paddington and elsewhere which was a pain. While the 7-foot gauge has some technical advantages for main lines it was just the sheer quantity of standard gauge lines that won it.
I imagine that added to the sheer quantity was the fact that putting standard gauge into broad gauge infrastructure, with its bridges, tunnels etc, would be far quicker, simpler, cheaper, than trying to expand standard gauge infrastructure to accommodate broad.
5 feet is just a good width for a wagon. You can comfortably fit two people side by side inside it. So most wagons through history have had wheels that are approximately 5 feet. It hasn't evolved from Roman gauge, it just that everyone everywhere used it. Much smaller than that, and a wagon doesn't fit two, and becomes unstable, and much wider than that and you have to make very wide roads for no reason.
@RegebroRepairs No. Everywhere didn't use it. Shropshire used a 4' gauge at its collieries. They used even narrower gauges for slate quarries. The Ffestiniog Railway uses a gauge of 23.5 inches.
Exactly it. It’s evolved as a useful size that one man could push about, a horse could pull and would be still narrow enough to fit down adits, between houses etc.
Yes, he doesn't really disprove the old horse's rear explanation. Cart widths come from ancient times, wagon ways were built around existing wagons, which evolved into plate ways and the current gauge follows directly from there.
@@robertbackhaus8911 but the issue of the rockets is all bullshit. And carts were wider than a horse.
Here in Australia there were a few anomalies between rail gauge and carriage width. Even had bogie changes. Same carriage or goods truck with the bogies changed according to the rail gauge ahead!
In peninsular Spain, the first railway from Barcelona to Mataró was 1440mm. However, a real scientific engineering commision was established around the 1860s to determine the best railway gauge. Since Spain is a country with much topographic unevenness and more steam power was needed than in most of flat Europe and UK, the gauge of 1668 mm was determined by considering the size of the steam cylinders between the wheels. Spain had many of Europe's steepest gradients.
I'm guessing by "real" you mean the Spanish word for "royal" as in a "royal commission" .
@@johndododoe1411 Royal commissions and decrees were up until 1860 which permitted the private laying of rail roads, after that a junta commission was set up to plan out the lines over the whole of spain and the infrastructure that goes with. I think the Engineering commission fell under the junta and his 'real' just means the first real official one. As before that it was up to the private investors to decide what they wanted.
@@jhnshep I don't know the specifics of Spanish rail history, but do remember that other Spanish regimes used royal prefixes for institutions even without royal involvement, and that some Spanish land ownership paperwork used abbreviations from the Roman republic long after the emperors took over .
@@johndododoe1411 Like Real Compania Irlandesa? 😅 perhaps, though he wrote 'a real' not the real, though only he can clarify that. I had to go look up a paper I flicked through once not so long ago and i couldn't find anything for the 'Real', it was a study on how different governments got involved in rail, spain being late. Anyhoo I found it again 'The Radiality of the Railway Network in Spain during its Early Stages (1830-67): An Assessment of its Territorial Coherence'. And I was looking up something for rail between france and spain that I stumbled on that one.
@@johndododoe1411 No, I meant real, not Royal.
Phenomenal writing, production, and delivery, sir. It would fit right in on the BBC.
Hi Paul, firstly many thanks for your productions last year, well made and beautifully presented by both of you. Secondly may I impart a little knowledge in your direction? Marc Brunel and Maudsley were contracted to fit out the Royal Dock-Yards with their block (as in pulley systems) making machinery. Marc Brunel being a French National (in exile, and married to an English woman) was not allowed into the Docks themselves. In his inimitable form he placed his Son Isambard as a foreman for his company, see Thames Tunnel for details. Part of the installation was to provide up-dated handling for the timber used as well as timber for the masts. To move the large baulks and logs around Marc specified a short tram/rail line of 7 foot gauge. When the GWR was built Isambard used technology he was familiar with along with the gauge he knew, as an aside the Dock Yard lines were short and laid with the baulk method exactly as the GWR was built. Thank you again and best wishes for the future.
Wonderful, thank you Douglas. Almost a story in itself right there.
Fantastic!
Non-sequitur, but it made me think: I wonder if there are old weigh houses / weigh stations along the Thames near the ports or rail stations, that can be explored.
I supported modern weigh stations at Port Melbourne - REALLY interesting logistics of pre and post grain drop-off weighing of entire trucks (and ~$10k per hour in opportunity cost if your weigh station breaks - The trains pile up, and trucks just take their business elsewhere).
@@pwhitewickThe reason why Ireland uses 1,600mm gauge is because it was in between two three railway’s gauges
@@pwhitewick highly interesting as the issue applied to Britain & the empire thanks.. BUT.. a 2nd episode explaining the adoption of other gauges as in the US etc.. & how geography played a roll in determining gauge decisions IE tight turns etc around hilly terrain.. 👍 from the colonies NZ
I do love that old story of rocket boosters being designed due to railway gauges being determined from roman horses backsides, saying that Paul, you have done a lovely job explaining how railway gauges developed 🚂👍
It was always suspect of a story to since the rocket boosters in question (Thiokol/ATK/Northrop Grumman Space Shuttle/SLS boosters) are about 12 feet wide... so at least 6 to 8 horse ass wide and not two. 😂
Loading gauge is more important than track gauge there for load clearances.
@@jacoblyman9441broad gauge would’ve seen Mars capable boosters perhaps in the 60s then? 🫠
@@PJWey no, the Space Shuttle boosters were a product of the 1970's. Besides, there were alternative rocket transport options available such as the Pegasus barge which was first used for the Saturn V. I believe they were built in Huntsville, Alabama then shipped out down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico then onto Florida.
Really the only reason rail is a limitation in the case of the solid rocket boosters is the factory is inland in Utah (just outside the Promontory Summit site famous for the Golden Spike actually), so rail is the best transport option out since there are no waterways to bring a barge up there to carry out bigger boosters. That wasn't so much of an issue with the other rockets being built there (ICBM motors, upper stage boosters, etc.) but the shuttle boosters push the limit of what rail transport can do. Any bigger motors would need basically to relocate the factory to another site with water access instead.
Another transportation alternative, SpaceX's California factory ships Falcon 9's via road. The entire booster is loaded up on a truck as a high and wide load then shipped on the highway. Their Starship rockets though are built on a factory at the launch pad though, since they are so big they can't fit on anything really other than really slow trucks that move them from factory to pad.
It is bulls**t.
I spent part of NYE debating the merits of different railway gauges (I’m sure this comes as no surprise) - and the very next day you had the perfect video illustrate this! Another cracking vid 😊
Thanks Paul. That clarifies the origin of standard gauge for me. I always thought that the Roman hypothesis was a bit of a horse's arse. Now we know the inventor has no idea why he chose it - problem solved! Yes life's like that, a bit random at times. The subsequent ½" addition for binding tolerance seems logical. I like your recent investigative format videos. Very enjoyable. Thanks!
I remember flipping through a North American railway industry magazine and coming across an article about missed opportunities in the history of railroading in NA. One was failing to abandon the current gauge early on for a six foot gauge. Citing the inability to increase the carrying capacity of rail corridors.
6 is too big. 5 or 5.5 max would have been good. One guy can move 9' ties all day.
@@MilwaukeeF40C 5 really should be standard, with less than that being considered narrow.
@@MilwaukeeF40C move ties by hand? No one does that any more. Not mass production anyway.
new build HSR systems are almost all standard gauge despite being able to pick anything so the benefits don't seem super exciting. the US also improved capacity without changing the rail gauge by making the loading gauge taller for bilevels and double stacks.
Here in NZ they use narrow 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in) gauge, due to the mountainous terrain, Some parts of Australia use it and I think Japan also uses this gauge.
In the US there is a good story about how over a 48 hour period in 1886 the 5 foot railroad gauge used in the South was converted to the standard gauge used in the rest of the country. I'm not sure how many 10s of thousands of miles of track that was, but the affected area was well over half a million square miles (1.3 million sq.km).
Initially the southern 5' gauge was converted to 4'9". That's the gauge of the railway most southern rrs connected to, the Pennsylvania rr and its precursors. Only later when the PRR moved to 4'81/2", did the rrs of the south do so.
I thought the south had multiple gauges, not just one, and that was part of the logistical problems during the Civil War. Anyhow, when time came to switch gauges, the ENTIRE south did it in 24 hours. Has to be true, I saw it on youtube.
@@edcew8236 Lol no. Some companies like the L&N for instance switched in the 1870s. The drop dead date was in 1886 for all the companies that hadn't changed over before that, and there was quite a scramble even with some companies choosing to transition before 1886. As for the multiple gauges, it doesn't seem that way. It looks like the big Southern railroads had settled on 5ft. That doesn't mean some of the smaller companies didn't have different gauges though.
@Odin029 They did _tons_ of prep work in the months beforehand, too, to be able to make the change so quickly. Ties had extra nails added on the side to be widened, to save some work on those two days. Locomotives and railcars had to be modified or replaced, with any replacements ready to roll at the changeover. Workers and supplies had to be in place before work started, since they couldn't ship any on tracks that were still being worked on _during_ the work. And so on.
I'd imagine some railroads took it as an opportunity for major upgrades to track and equipment too, much like how a lot of 1990s companies and institutions did major computer tech upgrades during their Y2K bug fixes.
In 1886? Really? Probably predrilled, and prepared for days. So the 'down time' was only 48 hours for shifting and respike the one rail.
Also true to say it's easier and cheaper to move one of two rails in and leave a gap between and particularly at the stations than move the rails apart and consequently have to move buildings, infrastructure and buy extra land to enable it
I suspect (from recollection of photographs and history of the railways) there was a three rail system in use for a long time, with narrow gauge inside the full GWR gauge. The conversion was mostly removal of GWR gauge locos and stock followed by a slow removal of the wide rail and realignment of the standard gauge a little bit. Tidying up point works, island platforms etc. took a while longer. And yes, getting the narrow gauge converted to broad gauge would have involved effort and cost not perceived to have commercial value at the time. But op north all is perfect all t time.
Another excellent and informative video, Paul. Couple of minor points. Brunel had been dead for over 30 years before the gauge-change so probably didn’t have too much of a hand in it.
The first railways in Spain were designed by British engineers and constructed by Spanish contractors. There is a story (possibly apocryphal) that a gauge of six feet was selected and thus built. Unfortunately, the Catalan foot equated to roughly eleven inches. The Imperial foot had not been specified. I was first told this by the jeffe d’estacion at Malaga and again in Barcelona and Bilbao.
Spanish railways have overcome the difference in gauge between Iberian and standard by a rather terrifying system which alters the effective axle length by physicalling pushing in or pulling out each wheel as the train trundles through the change shed without stopping.
Keep up the good work.
Conceptually the wheels on broad gauge rolling stock went on the sides rather than underneath. For the locomotive you could have the big wheels either side of the boiler which was not possible on standard gauge with a decent sized boiler.
Yep - even worse on 3'6" for boilers. Hence all those inventive engines. Articulated Beyer-Garrets. Welsh Fairlie. Narrow decapods with some wheels with no flanges. All to deal with that very issue on narrow gauges. Then on 4'8.5" articulated front and trailing bogies / trucks. Classic 4-6-4!
The ‘Bridge Rail’ was widely reused as fence posts and is still quite common if you scramble about in the undergrowth. It was originally used for both broad gauge and standard gauge track but was not the earliest broad gauge type used by the GWR; which was similar to Barlow rail, samples of which are still in situ at Chippenham Station forecourt as former gate posts.
Great video! I think one aspect of the gauge you did not take into account is cost of construction. With Brunel's gauge, you will by paying 50% or more for every track mile you constructed. Think about a viaduct or a tunnel being 50% wider, how much more time, material, and engineering would that require? How may more routes would simply be off the table because the terrain would not accept such a large gauge? In America, there was a narrow gauge as well as standard; however, it was prevalent in the West for extracting mineral wealth or timber. The bonus for narrow gauge was the cheaper cost of constructing a railroad that may only exist for a couple dozen years. In addition, narrow gauge used the wonderfully asymmetrical Shay locomotive that had far greater tractive effort than contemporary steam engines.
indeed, and converting that way is much harder, the other way, well you might be able to run a second parallel track on the same alignment.
There's narrow guage in Europe too on mountain railways, one even has a separate funicular to link stations below and above a steep glacial valley side with the mountain slopes.
Of course narrowing broad guage was far cheaper than any project widening lines, bridges and tunnels.
Not exactly so. the gauge the rails might be wider but the cars they carry would remain the same width. That width, not the gauge width, is what sets those parameters. The only cost difference I can see would be the length of the ties (sleepers)
@@terencerucker3244 Brunel's railway was actually built for wider rolling stock.
Furthermore despite a standard guage the early adoption in the UK means larger continental size carriages would require new lines and platforms. So standardisation to the "better" Brunel standard would have been impossibly expensive.
@@terencerucker3244 Yes and no, they did use different loading guages too, a standard gauge rail car is not 7ft wide:
"In addition the wider gauge allowed for larger goods wagons and thus greater freight capacity."
Yes, you could in theory take Brunel's loading guage stock, stick standard guage bogeys and have the overhangs like you do for full loading guage stock on a narrow guage railway. But the key here, is a. the other way, we end up having to widen the railway all the way down as the loading guage follows the guage:
"Until the advent of the ISO rectangular container the biggest things on the railways were passenger carriages, on the GWR broad gauge lines some main line coaches were built that were about ten feet wide, at the opposite end of the scale were lines such as the SECR where coaches were typically only eight feet wide"
"When the GWR changed from broad gauge to standard gauge their generous clearances often allowed a second track to be run into goods sheds and a third line to be run through double tracked stations on former broad gauge lines. When they switched to standard gauge however they adopted a smaller loading gauge similar to other main line railways and built most of their stock to this smaller gauge to allow through running."
Thanks for getting up to your neck in mud and researching into why Standard gauge is 4ft 8.5 inches and proving what the Romans have not done for us! I look forward to any other railway or canal content as it is great to see what solutions these early British engineering pioneers created to overcome unique challenges!
I'm not convinced that this (interesting) video DOES disprove the idea that the Romans (or anyone drawing anything with a horse) were ultimately responsible for this gauge - roughly. Paul suggests that Stephenson derived his gauge from existing plateways etc. that used horse-drawn rolling stock for which (presumably) the rear end of a horse was a major design factor, and his gauge with its legacy heritage won out over Brunel's more innovative one.
Not here in Ireland. The standard Irish railway gauge is 5ft 3
@@nigelmurphy6761 The International Railways Association decided to make 1435 mm, the International standard back in 1937. However this does not include great land mass countries such as the Soviet Union who decided to use the 1520mm, this was preferred gauge to stop invading armies using their Railways against them!
Excellent video and a very good explanation of how we got to 4’8.5”. I think it was the author Adrian Vaughan who suggested that the reason Brunel went for 7’ was because the the assumption was that the loco’s boiler had to fit between the frames to avoid instability. Thus a wider gauge meant bigger boiler capacity and longer/faster runs without the need to stop. Add to that the bogie had yet to be developed so coaches and wagons were 4-wheels only (a wheel at each corner) so they had to be short in length. A wider gauge meant greater payload/passengers per vehicle. The Ffestiniog was the first railway to use bogie coaches but that wasn’t until the 1870s. Perhaps if bogies been thought of sooner then gauges would have been even smaller. Best wishes to all.
Until the gauge to carriage ratio becomes unstable. Also one reason for even the 2' gague was to deduce costs of earth works and bridges. So carriages were narrow to get though the cuttings etc.
Brunel chose a gauge that was ' half as big again' as Stephenson's. 4 ft 8 and a half PLUS 2ft 4 and a quarter = 7 feet and a quarter inch.
No it doesn't. Adding the two together gives 7 feet and three-quarters of an inch.
Finally a proper explanation of the standard gauge origins. I have looked information all around but this is the first time after years that I can hear an answer that makes sense!
The semi-conical profile of railroad wheels is also a remarkable engineering design feature. It keeps the flanges from rubbing against the rail without a single additional part.
I was watching a rail program the other day and it said that just recently they changed the profile just a skosh and cut about 10% off the wear.
However, that angle is not fully standardized, which leads to wear and other problems in international traffic.
Depends if you count the iron tires as a part .
@@johndododoe1411- The tires are necessary regardless of the wheel profile. My point is that, by making the profile semi-conical, a railroad wheel rolls with minimal flange-rail contact, without adding a single moving part. It's an elegant solution, and it probably appeared early in the development of railroad technology--perhaps about the time when steam locomotives started moving the cars instead of animals and/or people, because once steam power was available, flange-rail contact would have become a serious source of friction and a potential derailment cause. Even before the Stockton & Darlington opened, steam railways were pulling long coal trains at 15 MPH.
I LOVE your enthusiasm...its infectious and a great start to 2024. Thank you 😊
It seems to me that Brunel was interested in the luxury express traffic of the day, but Stephenson was following the industrial application of railways. It was inevitable that the lower cost design would have greater appeal, when many lines were marginally economical to build and run.
Nah, 7' gauge had advantages for heavy freight too . Every foot of extra width increases the freight capacity by about 20% . 7'¾" has 50% more capacity than 4'8½" .
However, the area of a circle is a square law, so the cost of driving tunnels doesn’t go up linearly.
The Washington DC Metro was plagued with an increase in derailment events. And funnily enough the cause is RR gauge. And that was in 2017, and fixing the issue still ongoing.
A new fleet of passenger cars were inspected and the axle assemblies were ‘out of specification’.
Notably DC Metro uses 4’ 8.25” gauge. The 7000 series of cars manufactured by Kawasaki were found to have axles with wheel flange gauge ‘out of spec’.
So gauge matters!! Even 1/4” when it’s a fleet of cars and miles of track. Especially at the switches.
A bit like the battle between VHS and Betamax. Betamax had the better system but VHS had a better supply of films to view so won out.
Now... that was a battle
@douglasdeans2839 In the case of railways, Betamax won. 😁😁
Don’t forget V2000!
Better and Cheaper to license
also: not because Porn since Sony didn't cared that much
Even more. Sony would not license thier system to other makers. JVC did. So when you went into a shop you had umpteen VHS models and only Sony models for Beta. Bit like Apple v Microsoft.
Happy New Year!! Interesting video and a great walk too plus a culvert, a great way to start the new year.
Down my way we have dual gauge on the mainline, a mix of Iberian broad gauge together with the standard gauge for the AVE HST, that arrived a few years ago. The line was originally built by a British Company, The Granada Railway Company Limited.
They are currently commissioning a gauge changing machine so that stock can run on either gauges. If you look at the track quickly it looks like 3 rail on the Southern Region!!
All the best!!
13:15 108 *billion* ? I guess you mean 108 *million* ? That is already an impressive number.
(I tried to reply to someone else who made the same comment, but maybe I hit the wrong key and TH-cam sent me off to nowhere!) At about 13:15, he says 108 Billion, but the number on the screen is 108 Million, which seems much more reasonable.
@@johnsantos1738 I tried Bank of England inflation calculator. Came out with approx 78.8 million! Anyways, quite a bit of dosh I suppose, then and now.
7:45 A similar widening of gauge happened later in Dresden and Leipzig, both Germany. When they laid out their respective tramway tracks, they used standard sleepers for 1435 mm/4'8.5" rails. But to allow for paving the space between the rails, they used a different type of rail heads with a slit for the flange to roll in. This sightly offset the center of the railhead to the outside to allow for the side rail on the inside. And now, Dresden tram has 1450 mm gauge, and Leipzig tram has 1458 mm gauge, both not found anywhere else in the world.
Here in NZ the standard gauge is 1067 mm or 36 inches. Tight but we're a long steep windy country.
Lots of them closed now too, being transformed into beautiful cycle tracks along the original routes
If I recall correctly, NZ's standard gauge is narrow gauge, properly speaking. The broadest of narrow gauges, mind you, but still.
9:38 - Part of the reason that this dual gauge switch is such a mess is that the standard gauge on the straight route is changing from the near side to the far side, right in the middle of the switch. It takes a twisted mind to do this in the middle of the switch, rather than a few feet to the right of the switch.
I read once that Brunel's 7 foot gauge failed because other private companies preferred the narrower gauge because using the broad gauge required the purchase of a lot more land to lay the tracks. Brunel gave up and changed his rails to be compatible with everyone else.
I suspect that the higher cost of the longer ties (sleepers) would also have been a factor.
You mean Brunel's company after he died, similar to GE after Edison died .
The change to standard gauge happened 30 years after his death!
Standard gauge is at about the sweet spot for cost of operation and construction against what you can carry. Narrower gauges are cheaper to construct but the amount that can be carried rapidly decreases. So they tend only to be used for lighter traffic flows, in hilly areas where their ability to use sharp curves is useful. With broader gauges the cost of construction increases exponentially, and curves have to be less tight making planning a route more difficult as wider gauge wheel sets do not corner as well. Also back in the days when everything was carried by rail a great big broad gauge wagon with a couple of tons of goods in it was inefficient.
The US had primarily two different track gauges until May 31, 1886 when a two day mass conversion changed all interconnected track gauges to four feet, eight and a half inches. Preparatory work was done in advance to minimize the effort required over the change days. Prior to the change the Union states had adopted standard gauge while the Confederate states chose five feet. After the war between the states was settled, it was another 20+ years before railroad gauges were reconciled. The Union states had more than twice the track length of the former Confederate states, which is why standard gauge was picked. At the change-over time, 9,000 miles of track and large number of rolling stock and engines were converted to standard gauge in just two days, but only with many months of preparation making it possible.
Standard gauge also proves to be a good compromise for curve radii. The wider the gauge the greater the radius of curves has to be to prevent wheel skidding and track/rolling stock wear. The flanges of the wheels are not meant to contact the rails. The wheels have a conical section that self-centres in the rails. As the train goes round a curve the wheels shift to the outside of the curve and the outer wheel rides on a wider section of the wheel while the inner wheel rides at a smaller diameter. It is all worked out to minimize wear and screeching.
I know that you are dealing with the UK, and that you may have already covered this aspect in other viedos.... but in the US standard gauge and narrow gauge(s) were the one's that were really in competition. As you said the wider the gauge the more stability it provides and potentially higher speeds. However the narrower the gauge the smaller the radius required for a curve to be safely traveled... and less land cleared/ leveled. I don't know if that came into the consideration for the UK However in the US with the Appalachians mountain range being relatively close to the coast , and the time frame that the rail roads were expanding at least initially the narrow gauge was cheaper to lay in many areas of the mountains and standard gauge was better for the higher volume/ higher speed population centers and flatter areas. My point is that whether the end result was 4' or 5' the approximate width of standard gauge is generally a good compromise between the cost of land and the resources to prepare it and the overall capability of the finished system in terms of speed, load stability, and initial cost. Which though totally unrelated in the development process is likely why coincidentally they seem to mimic the width of Roman cart/wagon.... or to borrow a term from biology convergent evolution.
That bit about what amounts to convergent evolution is a good point. And maybe it ultimately amounts to just another way of saying that money makes a lot of your decisions for you.
very interesting. a few months ago, I took a ride on the mariazellerbahn, a 91km long narrow gauge railway in austria, which is in regular passenger operation and received a major upgrade a few years ago.
the history behind using 760mm in austria and the balkans could be interesting aswell, since that gauge is closely connected to the austro hungarian military, which constructed such lines for military goods transportation and later handed it over to civilian operators.
Great, thanks. Really professionally produced and narrated, a pleasure to watch.
The issue for Australia's many gauges stem from the fact that prior to 1901, when Australia became a country, the future states were run more like colonies. No real attempt was made to connect to other colonies via rail, and so the choice of gauge was litetally left up to the engineer ( usually from the UK, where at the time there was a plethora of gauges) as to what gauge to lay, to get the resources to the ships for shipping it around the world.
I suppose as well , many railways began as isolated projects - never envisioned as part of a broader statewide or event nationwide network , so the best gauge to suit individual projects or just the gauge the engineers were used to building would
In the antebellum American South and for a period of time afterwards there was no standardization of railroad gauges. Something the North had figured out early on. Which the North used to good advantage during the ACW.
Thanks! Sometimes I wonder about the arbitrariness of these engineering decisions. Reminds me of my cousin telling me how she learned to cook a roast from her mother: her mother cut each end off so that is what she did with her roasts. Only years later she found out that was so the roast would fit in the pan
Heard a similar story, but the mother would cut the drumsticks of her chicken!
During the interregnum the 7 foot gauge had a 4’81/2” rail added and thus some of the old stock and engines were better able to work out their lives. There was also the point that in the time of Railway Mania the sheer cost of the 7 foot gauge was much higher in terms of land acquisition. The construction was different as well as the 7 foot gauge rested on length wise planking not the cross ties of the smaller gauge though the length planks could be periodically cross fastened.
An interesting vlog, well researched. In the 1980s, British Rail (BR) had issues with modern stock "hunting" on continuously welded rail (CWR). The BR Research Department found that reducing the gauge to 4' 8 3/8" stopped the hunting. However, unfortunately several derailments of freight trains occurred on CWR. It was proven that the 1/8" difference in gauge was the cause, so BR went back to 4' 8 1/2" for all track and instead looked at changing the wheel profile on modern stock. As a point of interest, the track gauge was sometimes increased on tight curves to allow better transit of wheel sets, for example areas like Borough Market Junction.
I read an article written by an engineer many years ago. He said that the width of Roman chariot wheels was not determined by the width of the horses. That measurement can vary by the size of the horse and the person making the measurement. The accepted length of a cubit is 18-inches. If you take a wheel one cubit in diameter and turn it one revolution, its circumference would be 56.52-inches. That would be a very accurate measurement at the time. After all, .020-inches would be about the thickness of 5-sheets of paper. Measuring wheels would also have markings on them to indicate shorter distances. A yard is a double cubit.
It has been an age-old practice to measure distance by counting revolutions of a wheel. Even our early settlers heading west had an odometer (road meter) attached to their wagon wheels to measure distance. There were no tape measurers, so early carpenters carried a measuring wheel to mark off distance.
Measuring wheels can be purchased at any big box home center.
Excellent as always Paul. I love anything to do with railway architecture so I’ll follow anything of this nature closely. All the best.
Thank you Don
The three main railway gauges in Australia are
narrow: 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in),
standard: 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in), and
broad: 1,600 mm (5 ft 3 in).
Light rail for Sugar Cane harvesting uses 610 mm (2 ft).
I thought Australians were more efficient and didn't waste time doing inconvenient conversions for metric and imperial dual units.
@@DemPilafian a lot of us more efficient Australians are still old school and are more comfortable with Imperial measurement than with new school Metric.
Feet, Inches, Yards, Chains and Furlongs seem more real than ten times ten times ten times ten what-Evers.
@@Blackwater_House Australia successfully metricated very quickly back in the early 1970s. If you are truly more comfortable with imperial units you are literally already retired.
The good thing about being retired is that you have plenty of time to post meaningless garbage on YT.
@@DemPilafian I am almost 68 years old, Blind as a Bat, Deaf as a Post and Pig Ignorant; so your Opinion of Me has about the same value as a Mountain of Molehills.
But I am pleased that you were able to express yourself so Eloquently in this forum. Best Wishes for 2000 & 24.
@@DemPilafian How do you measure car wheel sizes in Australia?
Pilots use feet, knots and nautical miles. Pipe thread is BSP (British standard pipe) like much of the World apart from the US. The base unit is 1 which is 1 inch, 1/2 etc.
Very well done and your explanation of how standard gauge came into being was done in such a way to make it interesting. Not boring at all! Another hit for Paul!
A couple notes on gauge...
1. Stability - In the US, double stack container car loads are limited to 20 feet 2 inches height (!), running on 4' 8-1/2" gauge. They don't tip over very often. South Africa runs express trains on 3' 6" gauge. Brunel made a bad assumption about stability.
2. Changing gauge - on wooden ties, it's easy to convert from broad gauge to standard gauge by boring new holes in the ties. Changing from standard gauge to broad gauge would require replacing all the ties with longer ones. The government did something right for once.
I just found that maximum height is "Doublestack 4" = 20' 3" instead of "Doublestack 3+ = 20' 2". One inch difference to handle the taller containers at 2 high. Maximum width is 9' 11".
@SteamCrane Not so simple when you come to altering curves and points.
@@Poliss95 Correct, but the majority of mileage is track with only an occasional switch.
Much easier to reduce the gauge, I wonder how long it would take and how much if the commission decided Brunels gauge would be the standard 😮 great production as always, thank you.
The final conversion of the Broad gauge in 1892 was carried out over ONE weekend and ENTIRELY by manual labour.
@@user-du9oy4cp1q He's asking how much time, effort and money it would take, to convert the UK's gauge to Brunel's 7' gauge if his gauge was to become the defacto standard.
The accent in _Agricola_ is normally on the second syllable, not the third.
@stefanfrankel8157 Have you heard about his brothers Coca and Pepsi? 😁😁
Just call him George Farmer instead.
Not sure what it is, but is very calming listening to this guy
I come from a broad guage town. Adelaide South Australia. All our metro lines are 5 ft 3" . As were all our country lines as well. Though very few of those left now as the Govt did not want to maintain them. So hundreds of trucks tearing up the roads now. And that is just grain let alone other commodities.
Go to sunnt Qld [underwater today] and they still have 3'6". As does the very little line left in Tasmania.
Not so long ago passengers had to change trains in Pt Pirie to north or west. All standard guage now. There is still a turntable in Peterborough to turn all 3 guages. Not in use now,, nor is the towns large rail yards.
we sure are lucky hey lol
Hello from Brisbane.
the first rails were narrow tracks in mines, they have gotten larger from the exposure to light.
LOL! I about spit out my coffee over that one!
The BART system in California uses a less common 5’ 6” gauge. This was selected as the best way to ensure the cars, which were designed to be much lighter than other rail cars, would remain stable in the face of high winds at several points on the planned network (including a line across the Bay Bridge which never happened).
BART has a lot of design strangeness in general. until recently they used cylindrical profile wheels with no taper, which is common on streetcars, but not at all common for the subway-type system they actually built. allegedly the design consultants were from chicago where L trains have cylindrical wheels to deal with tight curves on the loop.
That was a biiig mistake. As at present, BART cannot expand over existing lines or right of ways, and because of that at present there is a standard gauge diesel connector.
Thoroughly enjoying your tales. Lot of work goes into your vlogs. Thank you. Most entertaining.
Stephenson was contracted to build the Stockton and Darlington Railway, will before the Liverpool and Manchester, Bolton and Leith. It was on the S&D R and the Mines Railways he discovered the binding and increased the Gauge by Half an Inch
Odd... so why was the Bolton and Leigh specified as 4ft 8.0 inches?
@@pwhitewick they would have specified 4’ 8”, but Stephenson would have built at 4’ 8.5”, because Stephenson already knew about the binding and the need to increase the gauge by half an inch, as he had already done so on the S&D R. Why do you think there was no binding on the S&D R. After all the S&D R opened in 27th September 1825. The Bolton & Leigh Railway opened in 1st August 1828 almost 3 years after the S&D R. The Manchester & Liverpool opened almost 5 years to the day after the S&D R, 15th September 1830.
Thanks Paul. A minor correction. At 0:44 you said 4' 8.5" in the UK. Not true - only in the GB part of the UK of GB and NI. In NI, all of Ireland in fact, the gauge is 5' 3" - and there's another story.
So-called Irish gauge was only JUST bigger than Standard.
Hence British Rail were able to sell some uk stock by simply re-working the wheels, axles and bogies to suit.
Yes Ireland uses 5ft 3, and the tram system is standard guage.
@@armstrongleworthy5420 In Auckland, NZ, for the last decade of diesel-hauled trains (before they electrified) the carriages were refurbished BR Mark 2's on 3'6" bogies. We also had some diesel multiple units form Perth, West Australia, surplus from when they electrified.
Here in Tasmania (Australia) the main line gauge is 3'6" and most mining tramways were 2" gauge.
Haha, 2" gauge is pretty narrow! 😁
@@owensomers8572 en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_East_Dundas_Tramway is one example...
@@ScottEvans-vk7hse That is a 2 foot gauge (2'), you originally typed 2 inch (2").😇 Wasn't sure if it was a typo, or Tasmanian mines were using Lionel Standard Gauge Trains! 🤔
@@owensomers8572 yeah typo (more like fat fingers!)
Thanks for bringing another video covering a subject which I might not have sought out, but having watched has stirred my interest. Good to see info given in quiet and comforatable format. Happy New Year to you and yours
Nice to learn the truth!
Here in Australia we started off with each independent state developing the railway systems before Federation. We ended up with multiple gauges. Mainly 3'6", 4'8.5" and 5'3". Why?
1. Some states would agree on a gauge and then one would have a change of government. The new govt would reneg on the agreement AFTER the other state had started.
2. The cost difference wasn't just the width of the sleeper. Narrow gauge lines cost far less in infrastructure (cuttings, tunnels, bridges) because they could better follow the contour of the land. One cost estimate for one mainline was a factor of 8 times, simply because of the land's variations.
Even a single state could use different gauges for different lines depending upon many factors. In my own South Australia we even had some towns with all three main gauges at the one station! The broad gauge was used by American Webb because the state government requested the best. Nearly sent the state bankrupt! The narrow gauge decided upon by the Federal government for the line to Alice Springs (cheapest option to fulfil a Federation agreement) and eventually decades later, standard gauge by the Federal government to get rid of all the changes in gauge. Queensland still uses and builds narrow gauge. The Ghan does not go there and technically The Indian Pacific does not either.
Of course we did get good at gauge changes. Bogey exchange sheds were built. Simply use the same carriages / wagons etc. Lift up the carriage/wagon/van, , slide out one bogey gauge, side in another and lower back down. Only had to change the engine. We even had some dual gauge track too.
Here in Victoria Australia we have 5 ft 3 in gauge as well 4,8/1/2 gauge
Yes the 1600 gauge that we use in Ireland aswell. I think it was probably brought to Victoria by Irish engineers.
5'3" is the Irish Gauge, still used across Ireland today.
Port Adelaide used to have 3 different bushes all going into the port. There was som interesting point work where the lines all ran together.
Another cool thing is that the wheels are conical, not cylindrical. This allows them to self center and for the wheels on a fixed axle to not squeal or slip when going round a curve
or only squeal a little!-
The U.S. and the UK use the same track gauge, but the loading gauges are definitely very different, that's for sure. The U.S. has the heaviest loading gauge you will find basicaly, which allowed for supermassive locomotives like the Big Boy and the Yellowstones to exist. Of course, the UK had very different priorities from those of the U.S., though, and simply didn't need such massive locomotives or the need to have such tall height clearances commonly found on U.S. railroads.
Before 1918 Poland ran mostly on standard gauge but in the east there were a lot of lines using Russian broad gauge. After WW1 these broad gauges were often changed to standard, only to be revertrd to broad gauge once Soviet Union invaded and occupied eastern half of the country in WW2. During the war the rail gauge was being changed back and forth many times depending on where the front line was and only after the war ended all but one line connecting to Ukraine were changed to standard. This one remaining broad gauge line was mostly used for transporting coal but after Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 it proved very useful for military shipments because it allows the trains to cross the border without stopping.
The broad gauge rails are known as "top hat" rail because of it's sectional shape. Another meeting of gauge differences is to be seen at Canfranc in northern Spain, French standard gauge meeting Spanish broad gauge, the station, longer than the Titanic, was a failure due to the man handling of goods from one platform to another. Went there a few years ago when it was in a very poor state, it's now a hotel I believe.
I believe a few TH-cam's have covered it in the dilapidated state The Tim Traveller and also Tom Scott just being two.
Canfranc was abandoned due to a tunnel failure.
Dual gauge trains are a thing too…
@@allangibson8494 no. A train derailment in 1970. Still, the big building was not being used by then in full capacity, and after most of the French line closed, it was finally abandoned. Only recently it reopened, and a new station on the former goods yard was opened.
Broad gauge rail was also called "bridge rail" cos in cross-section it looks like a bridge - you can see it in the fencing at Torquay station
@@tobythehairlessdog8876 The rail section wasn’t gauge specific. Bridge rail was used for standard gauge too.
Double headed rail was used too (but required special chairs at each sleeper).
I liked the video but everyone will tell you that you missed their favourite aspect of the gauge wars.
I will throw in my "twopence":
Larger gauge lines are more expensive to build and maintain. This is not a problem for a heavily used line like London to Bristol. For a rural branch line struggling to be profitable this is another nail in the coffin.
The bigger the gauge the larger the minimum practical radius of curves. This is not a problem on a line which is on reasonably flat terrain but becomes a problem on lines which thread their way through steep sided valleys and mountain passes. The only solution becomes more tunnels and other earthworks (which have to be wider for a broader gauge).
Narrower gauge lines are usually slow because faster trains will be unstable.
Around the world, mountainous areas often have narrow gauge feeder lines and wider main lines.
Brunel's gauge was seven foot and one quarter inch. The quarter inch was added for the same reason Stephenson added a half-inch to his. If you build track and rolling stock to the same gauge they will bind going around corners. Modern railways tend to "ease" (expand) the gauge even more on curves.
Just my thoughts.
Veeeeery good point indeed. Cheers
South Africa ran express trains on 3' 6".
Nowadays they have greasing devices on tight curves to prevent binding. There's one just to the south of the Ribblehead viaduct, the only one I've ever seen. You can see it from the station platform.
A tiny crumb of comfort for West Country, The SW Coast and South Wales inhabitants is that in the wake of this early "Get rid of Concorde" backward stumble down to ahem, narrow / standard gauge; we're blessed with wider tunnels, more spacious separation of high speed trains and so on.
A whiff of the amazing forethought of the fella remains and is of benefit to we poor benighted express commuters.
I love how you talk about finding remnants of a railway in a forest like you just found a rare species of animal
I only found out last week why the wheels on the trucks have a taper, really clever those Victorian engineers, also thinking about tunnels and bridges would be difficult to convert to the wider gauge wider tunnels wider bridges possibly
Wider tracks mean more land is needed, increasing costs.
More wood for the sleepers was a cost, as was more ballast. A couple of extra foot of land was not so expensive.
Wider tracks are one thing, multiple wider tracks gets ridiculous.
@@pdsnpsnldlqnop3330 It depends where you are. For a big railway station with like 10 or 15 tracks, wider gauge start to make a big difference
@@tom-sn4gd Paddington... Got you. Swindon? Nah mate!
The wider it is, the more stable it is and the more weight it can carry. The narrower it is, the better it corners. The American mining industry still uses predominantly a 3' 6" gauge for their rail, and several rail lines through mountainous regions use 3', although most of these are for tourism purposes only at this point. There were even some that went as narrow as 2'.
With modern materials for rails and sleepers, the standard gauge is a good compromise between carrying capacity and cornering, so it makes a lot of sense to just use the one width pretty much everywhere unless some significant engineering consideration dictates otherwise.
The "measuring in the center of the rail head" thing also lead to the odd Italian meter gauge, which in fact is 950 mm. France used to define 4' 8.5" as "1500 mm" (measured in the center) for a while. Standard rolling stock was used though.
Loved the little culvert diversion 😊
Perfect video as my first of 2024, thank you as always
Happy new year!
@@pwhitewick Really glad you found an original culvert! Think of the compressive force on those bricks!
I always thought that the standard gauge had its origin in early plateways and a distance of 5ft. A nice round number.
Thank you for the video well done it was wonderful getting to sit here in Texas and see all that beautiful countryside throughout the UK.
I think a fascinating example for a country sticking to another gauge than standard is Japan. The mountainous terrain and its need for tighter curves was perfect for the smaller gauge they still use. They only adapted for standard on the Shinkansen lines which are flat and straight.
Fascinating video on railway history. Germany also hat several gauges used parallel. Back then of course it wasn't Germany at all and every little Kingdom, Duchy and Principality had it's own railway company and also it's own gauge.
I wonder why we adapted the English standard. ^^
Spain and Portugal still use the wider Iberian gauge for most of their trains, but Spain's high-speed network is standard gauge to interoperate better with the rest of Europe. But now they've got some trains with variable-gauge axles which can actually switch between the two, with special gauge-changing equipment on the track.
One of the oddest ones to me is the Washington, DC Metro, which is 4' 8 1/4". That quarter-inch shaved off from standard gauge is because they're using less conical flanged wheels, to reduce hunting oscillations at the cost of more squealing on the curves.
Meanwhile, Boston's MBTA is standard gauge but it recently came out that the new Green Line Extension was accidentally built to slightly incorrect gauge, causing all kinds of problems.
Japan is fascinating. Apart from the Shinkansen lines, there are also railway companies and tramways that run standard gauge, a total of 2,600 route miles. There is even 60 miles of "Scotch" 4 foot 6 inch gauge on two interlinked Tokyo commuter lines and the Sapporo tram network. And 30 miles of electrified 2 foot 6 inch gauge.
Note that Japan has a much wider loading gauge on high speed lines, mainly I believe because the slab track they use is much more stable. They also have trains that automatically stop in an earthquake.
Japan historically used 3'6" for the former JNR network, and many private companies used the same gauge, although others (including some subways) used 4'8.5". 3'6" sounds sensible in Imperial, but its a rather odd 1067mm in metric! I'm not sure why the narrow gauge was chosen - presumably they didn't anticipate the amazing industrial growth in the 20th Century. Yes, there is lots of mountainous terrain, but the cities are usually on coastal plains, where a narrow gauge is unnecessary. But as has been mentioned, the loading gauge for most Japanese trains is huge - it seems rather odd to think that some of the huge 15-car long distance commuter trains - sometimes including a couple of double deck cars - all packed to capacity - are narrow gauge trains! Its interesting that where a free choice of gauge could be made - eg Shinkansen, Chinese high speed rail - govts have stuck to 4'8.5" rather than any wider gauge, even at seriously high speeds. Again Shinkansen are far wider than UK stock, seating 5 across (+aisle) comfortably.
@@timbounds7190 In terms of 'narrow gauge' there are two widespread gauges - metre gauge and 3'6" gauge. 3'6" is in use in Japan, New Zealand, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania, South Africa and Zimbabwe, and others. Metre gauge is in use in Europe (e.g. northern Spain, CFP in south of France, Switzerland - notably Rhaetian Railways), east Africa, Brazil, Bolivia and others.
Very informative thank you.
Brunell was a genius 🎉
From Wikipedia on Australian railway gauges:
Until the 1880s, the gauge issue was not a major problem, as there were no connections between the separate systems. The focus of railway traffic was movement from the hinterland to the ports and cities on the coast, so governments were not concerned about the future need for either inter-city passenger or freight services. It was not until 1883 when the broad and standard gauge lines from Melbourne and Sydney met at Albury, and in 1888, narrow and standard gauge from Brisbane and Sydney met at Wallangarra that the break of gauge became an issue.
It needs to be remembered, that until Federation (1901) the benefits of a uniform gauge were not immediately apparent, as passengers would have to pass through customs and immigration at the intercolonial border, meaning that all goods would have to be removed for customs inspection. It was only with Federation in 1901, and the introduction of free trade between the states, that the impediment of different gauges became apparent.
Super video. Glad to be corrected on the ‘Horses Arse’ explanation. Although, that has spoiled a good tale about the size of the space shuttle engines that I used to illustrate how you need to keep pushing to get to the real cause of events. Still, I may still keep using it…
The only thing I remember about how Stephenson chose his guage was what I read in a history book at school. In deciding the track width of his engine Stephenson measured the axles of numerous carts being used on the roads of the time. I presume most of these would have been horse drawn. He then took the average and settled on that figure, which turned out to be 4ft 8 1/2in. Whether this is true or not, I have no way of telling because I also heard (don't know where) that this gauge was the best at stopping the engine from tipping over on a bend. Did he not leave any notes?
The video has a quote from stephenson saying he can't explain why he ended up with the gauge he did.
@martinhawes5647 He may have not remembered, but it was obvious that he worked in mines where the gauge for the horse-drawn carts was 4ft, with some varying to 4ft 71/2in, whilst other mines in the North of England used wider gauge. I suspect that he may have taken note of what worked and what didn't, and went with what did. Cost and time could well have come into his reasoning, as these two factors always have a bearing on any engineering enterprise. But, we'll never know.
@@majorbruster5916Video has a more plausible explanation of running his 4'8" gauge on the same lines as the old 5' carts by making the outside of the 2" rails fit the old carts . Then the ½' was added to work better in curves after the 5' carts were gone .
Keep telling the stories Paul :-) Thank you.
As indicated in your video, and comments from other viewers, Australians have had a thing for railway gauges and it was a topic for long conversations and debate for a century and half. Not just by railway buffs. We even created a game around Victoria's broad gauge called Trugo. Played with a mallet and buffer rings from a railway carriage, the courts are 90 ft long, representing 2 x 45ft spans of rail, with a width of 5ft 9, the 5ft 3in gauge with 3 inches either side symbolising the rails. The game is almost exclusively played in Victoria, the state with the 5ft 3in gauge.
Err . . SA still has 5'3" for suburban trains. Used to have same for country and for Adelaide to Melbourne.
Yes, we should make South Australia a Trugo state as well. I'm currently writing a history on the sport and It is interesting that, to my knowledge, there was never an attempt to introduce it to South Australia@@johnwinter6061
Sorry to hear about Hattons, I wasn’t a big buyer from them but they did supply me a few rarities.
With their own designs, eg the Genesis coaches, I hope they can realise some value by selling on the IP rights and designs.
The other thing that could be sold, hosted or picked up by someone would be the Hattons Directory, which is a great resource that clearly has had a lot of work go into it.
It's a sorry state of an industry right now.
@@pwhitewick it’ll recover. My comment was meant for another thread, but it works here too!
Another great and informative video, thanks Paul.
The back end of a horse requires a harness about 4'8". So when pits started using horses to pull coal drams, although there was no standard they all ended up using roughly that gauge as being the most efficient.. When Stephenson started his locomotive works he stuck with the 4'8" of his local tramway, he was the largest locomotive manufacturer in the world, so set the de-facto standard.
That explains 4' 8", but where did the extra 1/2" come from?
@@Mortimer50145 Paul explained it. Having the flange gauge and the rail gauge the same meant that the flanges bound up against the rails on curves, so Stephenson nudged the rail gauge out 1/2".
@@Mortimer50145 Adding the extra 1/2" gives you about 1 per cent tolerance for oversize axles as mentioned in the video. Undersize axles were accommodated by the flat of the wheels.
@philldavies7940 Not true. The gauge has absolutely nothing to do with the back end of a horse. There were many different gauges at the time ranging from 3'0" to 5'0". The track was level with the ground, so resembled more of a tramway than a model railway. 4'8" just happened to be the gauge of Killingworth Colliery where Stephenson was employed. Ig he had used the gauge of Wylam Waggonway which ran just outside the front door of the cottage where he was born, we might have ended up with 5'.0" standard gauge.
@@Poliss95 True, the wagons would have been drawn with agricultural drawbar shafts connected to a single point, the width of the wagon is irrelevant
It's sad that Australia has so many gauges. Queensland made a train link between Sydney and Brisbane difficult. To my knowledge, the dual gauge line between the NSW border and Brisbane central is the only one in Queensland, with all the other lines being narrow gauge. Another country worth mentioning is Japan, where all the local lines are narrow gauge, while the bullet train lines are standard gauge. To run the Shinkansen to Yamagata, they had to build a dual-gauge track where it's a rare example of a bullet train and local train sharing the same line.
Great video. I watched a program years ago on the two "titans" of railway "battling" it out, building railways and incredible bridges. (In fact, they were friends.) Brunel thought the trains were rather rough to ride, so he had Charles Babbage make a machine to measure how much they shook. This is often considered an early diagnostic test machine. Brunel settled on 7 ft. It was a much smoother ride. I do wonder, in the great alternate "What if..." universe, if they had the foresight to switch to 7 ft, how much more (people and freight) could have been transported with fewer cars, and a lot less bouncing around. Short term gain will almost always win out when the payoff is further down the road.
Odd because while Brunel was a genius in many ways his railway track was very poor. Much too stiff for early trains that had very little in the way of suspension. So probably rode rougher than standard gauge track which tended to be built with cross sleepers as is done to this day.
@@meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee2 What I do recall from the program - taking it at face value - his trains were smoother according to Babbage's tests. Otherwise, yes. Brunel and his competitor (his name escapes me) were geniuses and friends, which came in handy later when Brunel came under attack by his detractors. Their bridges were unique, ingenious feats of engineering, and still in use today. Beyond that I can't say. As much as I like trains, there are other things that capture my attention.
Blasphemy. I know. 😧
Mr W. you missed a trick... Rather than telling people again why chariots are nothing to do with the current gauge... put a link for others to click on to watch that video!
🙂 he made mention of said video 🙂
I grew up in Australia where the gauge issue was a running joke.
Why? Do they use Chinese gauging? American? British?
@@scottanos9981 Broad gauge (5' 3"): Victoria, and a little in South Australia.
Standard gauge (4' 8½"): New South Wales, South Australia, Northern Territory, Western Australia, and some in Victoria.
Narrow gauge ( 3' 6"): Queensland, Tasmania, and a little in Western Australia.
@@AndyCallaway I'm shocked 😯 how did the government not standardize it by now? LOL
@@scottanos9981 As I say - a running joke. 😄
Thanks for yet another interesting video. I think that 'The cart track theory' was to do with the size that the wagon builders were already capable of. Cheers from an unfortunately rail free Bali.
14:03 absolutely excellent video. I absolutely want to see more of this
Thank you for mentioning Australia , we are an interesting case in point re gauges,
Australia is more frustrating rather than interesting. Here in Adelaide the local rail is 5'3'' but interstate lines are standard gauge so it's difficult to link up regional towns by rail with Adelaide