The whole gauge thing was a mess across the world in the early days... technology really focussed on locos and ability to pull, many engineers just simply came up with their own track system... then ordered the stock accordingly, there was in the early spread of railways very little communication between the various engineers, they all knew where to get the track technology but applied it as they saw fit... you imagine the distances involved and the number of small rail schemes in the US... 😮 !!!

Yes I think there is a Thomas episode.

Timber baulks on the old broad gauge were the norm.

Hope you well.

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I only discovered it, reading Keegan's 'American Civil War'

then again, why 'standard gauge' is 4' 8.5" is one of life's abiding mysteries. Plenty of countries have 5ft gauge ( Russia for one ) and 5' 3" is another common one ( Eire ) .. Spain is one or the other...

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Subsidence also interacted with other geological features such as faults. In Leigh, Lancashire, while mining was still going on, movement of faults was a common occurrence. One one occasion the fault which ran across the churchyard in Leigh resulted in graves being disturbed, one part of the churchyard dropping (or the other lifting) so that the graves were broken open and the coffins inside them. This resulted in my grandmother remarking that nobody was going to look at her remains after she'd been buried - so after that the family turned to cremation.

Grahami

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Standard Gauge comes from George Stephenson Liverpool and Manchester railway... how it came about exactly isn't known but the fact that Stephensons railway was highly successful and well regarded hints that it was probably considered just right by those seeking to emulate his success.
In 1845 a Royal Commission recommended adoption of 4ft 8.5" on the Mainland to be adpoted as the standard gauge and that pretty much sealed it, yet they went for 5ft 3 " in Ireland. In 1846 the gauge act was passed saying all new lines should be built accordingly. However Brunel had other ideas and in Scotland some stand alone lines were built as 5ft 6" although all were subsequently converted.

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I have had a sneaky suspicion that 4ft 8 1/2 in was the result of the Outram standard of 4ft 2in between flanges of a plateway plus the width of the plates themselves - about 3 inches each, which gives you more or less the standard gauge. Is this just a coincidence? The stone block separation for an Outram line would be the same as that needed for a standard gauge edge railway. How many Outram lines were converted to edge railways of standard gauge? Even if the stone blocks were not reused, the trackbed would be the right width.

Thats one of the theories surrounding standard gauge origin that I've heard before and I must admit its the favourable one for me with an extra half inch thrown in for flange clearence and potentially gauge widening... as the with the edge rails and plates there are of course no bends just connected straights... hence gauge widening.

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I don't believe it was ever specifically 'designed' as such, rather that it evolved as the sum of various existing practices and manufacturing tolerances of new and existing items.

It was generally realised that a gauge of 'about' 60" was 'about' right for the overall weight of the waggon loads ( the principal design parameter for any railway )

broadly speaking, there are rules-of-thumb relating waggon loading, running speed and gauge. Hence the acceptance of the 2' and 2'6" ( 75cm ) gauges - 2'6" gauge railways are much larger than 2' gauge ones.

2' ( 60cm ) is generally regarded as the smallest 'useful' gauge, with gauges of 18" and 15" where very tight radii, very small loading gauges and limited traffic loadings are the main constraints.

same applies to 3' gauge and 3'6" ( Cape Gauge ) railways. 3' gauge can be as large as British-outline standard gauge, 3'6" provides higher running speeds and total train weights.

European railways generally use 1 metre gauge for both 3' and 3'6" applications, for historical reasons

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In the 1830s there was no concept of a national system, nor expectation that one would come into being; each line was seperately engineered. Hence gauges were chosen by the individual engineers, with broad and standard (and a few narrow) chosen to suit local conditions and the engineers' preferences. Stephenson was a consultant on a surprising number of lines and this contributed significantly to the spread of 4' 8.5", even though they were initially built as isolated lines - e.g. the Taff Vale Railway.

5' 3" was Irish Standard Gauge (including post-1840s guage legislation in mainland Britain); engineers took it to a few parts of the Empire, where it survived long after Irish railways had been converted.

are Irish railways 4'8.5" now then - not that I've ever had occasion to find out?

I do know that Indian railways are 5'6" gauge

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Nope still 5' 3"...

I am off to play on the 5'6" in Sri Lanka on Saturday... got some nasty Diesel Electrics to sort out!! 🙂

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Motivated by PBs post on Witton Hall Salt Mine

http://www.cheshiremagazine.com/Archives/tension.html 

A bit more here.

http://www.welshcoalmines.co.uk/forum/read.php?14,33382