Why do most countries use different railway gauges?
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- Опубліковано 23 бер 2020
- Around 60% of the world uses the standard 1,435mm gauge today while the other 40% uses either a narrow or a broad gauge. Why does this difference in railway gauges exist? Wouldn’t it be simpler if we all used the same gauge? You need to learn some historical facts about railway tracks before getting answers to these questions.
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#railwaygauge #traintracks - Наука та технологія
At 3:45 it is backwards, Russia had and still has a wider rail gauge than Germany, Russia's track gauge is 1,520 mm and Germany has 1,435 mm
Also trains in Russia are wider. E.g. Siemens' "Velaro RUS" is 34 cm wider than "Velaro".
Yes. Also the first railway built in the Russian Empire was in modern day Poland and this was built to 1435mm because it was expected to connect to the German rail network.
When the first 1524mm (5’) line was built near St Petersburg the idea of connecting the railways seemed fanciful given the massive distances. We underestimate what a revolutionary technology the railways were and how they “shrunk distances”.
Modern ex-USSR railways have adopted 1520mm as the official gauge, 4mm narrower than 5’. Interesting Finland still used 1524mm but the difference is not significant enough to prevent inter-running of locomotives and rolling stock.
@@tjejojyj I had heard the broader gauge was deliberately chosen to discourage invaders using the railway. I think this was a extra assistance in WW2 that delayed the Nazi invasion. I expect that extra delay was appreciated in the dark days of WW2.
@@johnd8892 it seems to be a rather widespread myth about deliberate choosing of a different gauge - there wasn`t a plan to connect railways at all when it was choosen and there were no standarts at the moment. Emperor Nicholas I who started railway building in Russia actually was an engineer and have tried working as a stoker in 1816 on one of the first locomotives when he visited George Stephenson, and Stephenson wanted to make guage wider to make it more efficient - i think it was this influence that affected russian standart of railways.
@@johnd8892 The gauge issue wasn't that significant as Russian track was too light for heavy military transports and until it could be relayed it was easy to slew one rail in. A more major issue was water, Russian supplies were further apart than German locos were built for hence the special tenders
I love it. “60% use this. The others are either wider or narrower.”
I love trains.
@Johnathan Kylan bro, trying to advertise a product in a youtube comment section is not the best way to do it
This video is pure garbage. The comment section has more information
In India IR(Indian Railway) uses 3 different rail gauges. For the most cases IR uses broad gauges it's 1675 mm(1.6mtr) and if I'm not wrong it runs the fastest, heaviest and longest trains in the country and covers almost 90% of the railway network.
For the less winder Standard gauges it is basically used for Rapid Urban Transit systems or what we locally call *Metro Trains*. India currently has 14 operational Metros in 14 cities and approximately 26 city metros are under-construction and also some of the existing are increasing its length. As you have mentioned it's
1. Cheaper
2. has less weight to carry on board
3. and the trade off is faster speed in an urban setting.
As for the narrow gauges it's around 700mm in India and its very few tbh. They mostly are mountain railways and listen under UNESCO World Heritage. They are 1. Simla 2. Darjeeling 3. Nilgiri mountain Railways and yes they are slow as those are in tourist destinations and hilly resorts. But IR is planning on to change the tracks
Anyway India is heading toward 100% electrification by 2023 and honestly surprisingly
enough this will be finished in time. 🤧
I loved the video. 🙏 NAMASTEY.
Thanks that was very interesting and great to hear.
Its really funny cause here in San Francisco Bay, Our Subway system uses Indian Gauge (Not sure which one) Because they didn't want other rail companies to use their rails, (Idk why they thought that tho tbh)
Surely many railways in India used metre gauge which you didn't mention. These are the ones being changed to broad where possible.
@@michaeltb1358 Yes most meter gauge tracks are mostly abounded or used as touristic trains. In few places they making a completely new routes with many bridges(including 2 of the largest bridges in the world) and tunnels. India also started construction of Bullet Trains (Shinkasen)
@@sathvikpasumarthy Shinkansen is specifically japanese high speed trains, Indian high speed trains won't be Shinkansens, they'll be their own thing.
Another fun reason why standard gauge got popular is that for a substantial period in the 19th century, if you wanted locos and rolling stock, Britain was pretty much your only place to go because they were the only people with a developed manufacturing base for it. And Britain used standard gauge, so it was cheaper and easier to just plan for that.
Imagine if we had gone with with Brunel gauge instead.
@@Croz89 We would have had a smoother ride, for sure.
Well, unless they charged more I understand, but private locomotive builders would build to whatever gauge the customer wanted.
@@Mason58654 Well yeah, that’s the thing. The more custom work there is, the higher the price. It also excludes you from buying any rolling stock second hand.
@@Mason58654 There is a thing called negotiating power. They would change the factory if a single customer ordered 1000's of trains but they wouldn't if 1000's of customers asked for different gauge individually for their orders of 1 train each
You are mistaken. Russia has a broader, not narrower gauge than Germany. 1,435 mm in Europe v 1,520 mm in Russia.
Right, standard gauge 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches.
It Might Be ..... Because Of The Sri Lankan Veteran Mechanical Engineer Who Graduated In The Russian High Rank University Mr. Saman Sirimanna Said That The RUSSIAN FEDERATION Using Much Wider Gage Railway Track Than Rest Of The World Actually I Was Stunned When I Heard About It.........
@@naleenperera1969 Sri Lanka, together with India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have a gauge of 1,676 mm, wider than the Russian, and all these numbers are easily verifiable
Not here in Ireland. The Irish standard railway gauge is 5ft 3 as opposed to the standard 4ft 8 in the UK and around Europe.
@@nigelmurphy6761And so does the state of Victoria, Australia 🇦🇺
Judging by the comments, there seem to be a lot of inaccuracies in this video
Not only that but a lot of video clips used just seem used at random and don;t do a good job demonstrating what's being said.
@@TheOnlyBongo Absolutely. Almost NONE of the video clips are accurately matched to the commentary.
It is more an inacurracy than a video.
@Jamie bruh...
1:49 - His name was Richard Trevithick, not Robert.
and pronounced Trev-ITH-ick, not Trevy-thick :-)
@@bobmartin7399 and if you're going to make a video about trains, it might be a good idea to spell George STEPHENSON properly!
In Bangladesh, its mainly broad guage (5 ft 6 in) and metre gauge (3 ft 3 in) together in a single one, also known as dual gauge. Broad gauge helps to carry more passengers and payload while maintaining connectivity with neighboring India which is almost solely a broad gauge network now. Metre gauge are comparatively older ones which are still to be replaced by dual gauge or converted to broad gauge within 2030 or so.
Before the partition, it was all united, and thus how India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan, shares the same railway line and infrastructure.
Yeah, we have broad gauge only in India at present. Narrow and Standard gauges have been done away with except Toy Trains which run in hill stations like Darjeeling.
@@mr.whatever1492 We never had Standard gauge in mainlines, the one you are talking about is meter gauge, which exactly measures to 1 meter whereas standard gauge is about 1.4 meters. Broad gauge is 1.6 meters. Also in India we have two types of Narrow gauges, to identify them you need to look out for the locomotive nomenclature for the same, so for example in India if W stands for Wide guage (From an example loco WAP-7), Y stands for meter guage (Example YDM-4), similarly there two versions of Narrow Guage, one N (Example NDM - 1) whose dimensions are 762 mm and second is Z (Example ZDM - 1) whose dimensions are 610 mm. Standard guages are finally being used in some lines of Delhi Metro, Mumbai metro, Kolkata Metro etc. to ease out tendering and manufacturing process of Metro rakes.
@@mr.whatever1492 Nope, Nepal had two narrow gauges lines which are now replaced with broad gauge.
@@Ishpreetb264 I know one is the line between Janakpur and Jaynagar. Where's the other one?
Japan has 4 gauges.
22,301 km (13,857 mi) of 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in) (narrow gauge), of which 15,222 kilometres (9,459 mi) are electrified. Used mainly for general passenger and freight lines.
4,251 km (2,641 mi) of 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) (standard gauge), all electrified. Used mainly for high-speed lines (Bullet trains), subway lines, and some suburban lines.
96 km (60 mi) of 1,372 mm (4 ft 6 in), all electrified. Used mainly for Keiō Line branches and regional tram systems. (See 1372 mm gauge railways in Japan).
48 km (30 mi) of 762 mm (2 ft 6 in), all electrified, mostly regional. (from Wiki).
Shouldn't the title be "Why do most countries use the same rail gauge?" 60% is a bigger number of something than 40% of something. Just asking for a friend.
I was thinking the same
@@JFBence good, I'll tell my friend. : )
Probably availability of rolling stock. When the UK adopted the 4' 8.5" gauge, they were making locos and cars/wagons/carriages to that gauge. anybody wanting to use a different gauge would need to make rolling stock locally in that gauge. it would probably be easier to lay track to the UK standard gauge and have a ready catalog of existing rolling stock to buy pre-built, or to make it locally, a ready market to export the rolling stock to.
@@notmuch_23
Did you miss the point of Hugh's question?
That ratio only really applies to the primary network gauge. Many countries that have a primary standard-gauge rail network also have secondary narrow-gauge rail networks that amount to more than just a single basic line, most notably Switzerland, Germany and Austria.
Australia still has 3 different gauges in mainline use. Victoria has broad gauge at 5’3”, New South Wales has Standard gauge 4’8.5”, Queensland narrow gauge 3’6” and South Australia for a time had all three.
Apparently the NSW gauge should also have been 5'3" in concert with Vic and SAustr., but they sacked their Irish engineer and replaced him with a Scot, whose idea of what was the proper gauge was different. I think the first railway in NZ was also 5'3".
The reason for the broader (5 foot gauge) in Russia was because the imperial government in the 19th century employed an American engineer, George Whistler (father of the painter James McNeill Whistler) to design their rail network. He was most familiar with the construction of 5 foot gauge track, a very common gauge used in the US at the time.
Yes, and the southern US states in particular.
So, his wife was a model for a painting.
What Is The Existing Gauge Of The World's Longest Railway Track " RUSSIAN TRANS SIBERIAN " ?
@@naleenperera1969 I believe it's 5 feet.
@@naleenperera1969 Virtually all russian railways use Russian standard gauge - 1520 mm. The russian railway gauge was formally changed from 1524 mm to 1520 mm in 1970. There used to be a narrow gauge network in Sakhalin island inherited from Japan but it has been recently completely regauged to 1520 mm. Once upon a time there was a large number of narrow gauge industrial railways (transporting lumber, peat etc. from remote places to the mills) but very few of them still exist.
India uses broad gauge (1676mm). Smaller gauge lines do exist, but they are obsolete and being converted to the standard broad gauge.
Vikash Chandra made some great films on YT inculding "The Line to Patalpani" , he seems to have disappeared.
@@David-ci1vn Are you a bot?
@@anarghyasumanth8590 I've no idea why you might think that, surely not because I mispelled the name Vikas Chander; here's his own site www.vikaschander.com and his stunning film of the equally stunning The Hochschwarzwald Model Railway
@@David-ci1vn No not that, it's because there are a lot of bots on UA-cam who promote unrelated products.
*Because when the original systems in each country were built, a different gauge was chosen, and then that choice became the local "de facto" standard and was perpetuated as a matter of course.*
that is not always the case.
stevenson said after that if he was doing it again he would add a couple of inches to the gauge!
Yeah if the standard was at 4'11" instead, it would round neatly into 1500mm
@@doujinflip but then again, if you wanted a nice a number, just choose broad gauge 5ft 3”, otherwise measured as 1600mm
Couldn't care less if the gauge translates into french well; ft & in roll off the tongue better.
@@doujinflip Only the hated French used metric system at the time; there was no way the Brits inventing train travel were going to fall for the Frogs' sneaky ruses & resort to that ridiculous new-fangled bunch of nonsense! 😉
@@grimsley9989 5ft 3 is whats used in ireland standered guage. It was a british compromise to southern ireland wanting the normal standered gauge. And the unionist ulster area wanting a 5ft 6 gauge!
The American south did not covert gauges until after the end of the civil war, and then it was done, if I remember right in one day (24 hours), the History Guy has an video on that.
He also got wrong that the Northern U. S. was all standard gauge at the time of the Civil War. While it was more common in the North, there were several other gauges in use in the Northern U. S. into the 1880s. What became the "Water Level Route" of the New York Central had at least 3 different gauges, sometimes changing in relatively short distances, like between Buffalo, NY and the PA/OH line (I think 4'9"), then Ohio had it's own gauge (I believe 4'10"). Since the gauge differences were not great there were "compromise cars", that had wide, tapered wheel treads that could bridge the differences. Like a lot of compromises, they were not great cars, apparently rode very roughly, and were prone to derailing. And then famously the Erie and connecting railroad Atlantic and Great Western were originally laid to a gauge of six feet, giving the Erie some of the most generous clearances and loading gauges in the Eastern U. S. If Conrail had not abandoned just about all of the Erie/Erie Lackawanna early on, that route would have been well-suited for today's double-stack container trains.
@Ralph Goober Great infrastructure idea. let's re drill all the tunnels and rebuild all bridges. Shouldn't cost too much. LOL.
Russia's broader track gauges is nOT by accident or coincidence..
It was Tsar Nicholas I who insisted that the Russian Empire used a different track gauge than other countries. and they reason is to prevent an invading force from using Russia's tracks to transport their supplies and weapons into the country.
It prove to be a wise decision during WW2
It's a myth. The reason Russia adopted a wider gauge was because American engineers were contracted, and the American South had this gauge.
The Iberian gauge was also made different from France to avoid an invasion through the Pyrenees.
If that was the rationale it would actually have been the Spanish gauge (technically) that was chosen for that reason. The Iberian gauge is actually a compromise (of 4 mm) between the Spanish gauge and the Portuguese gauge, since they were very close to begin with.
@@paulkennedy8701 Yes, the Spanish gauge was made that way because it's the one bordering France, and also because Spain is very mountainous and having wider tracks meant bigger and more powerful engines to deal with the incline. Then Portugal decided to adopt this gauge and thus the Iberian gauge was created.
@@alfrredd
Not quite. The original Spanish gauge was 1672 mm. The Portuguese gauge was 1664 mm. As I said, the Iberian gauge (1668 mm) was a 4-mm compromise by both countries.
I'm sorry but I'm obviously missing something here. The description says that around 60% of the world uses the 'standard' guage of 4'8½", yet the question is, "Why do most counties use different railway guages?" To me 40% is way less that 60% and that therefore most countries use the same guage!
Laughs in India 1676 mm!
In Argentina too... a very british width... :/
Broad gauge makes a lot of sense for India, the higher passenger capacity per car is definitely useful.
@Ralph Goober funny but we really just need to get trains operational again first a lot of places.
Brunel wouldn't regard that as wide enough. He chose 2140mm (well, the imperial not metric equivalent)
@@paulqueripel3493 otherwise known as Broad Gauge
The UK doesn’t use “standard gauge” - only Britain does! Northern Ireland runs on Irish Gauge.
The Railway Regulation (Gauge) Act was enacted by the United Kingdom Parliament in 1846. It mandated the track gauge of 1,435 mm to be the standard for Great Britain and 1,600 mm to be the standard for Ireland including Northern Ireland.
At 5:31 "Dhaka Komlapur Railway station" we use two gauges at a single track.
Russia adopted 5 foot, following an American engineer's advice; at the time 1860s, Imperial Russia was on an Inch based measurement system. So 60 inches was an easily measured gauge.
5 ft was also the gauge of most of the Confederate States, and the change to Standard was done by Northern troops as they destroyed the Confederate system and rebuilt new lines in standard gauge for their own strategic purposes. After the Civil war, standard gauge was decreed the national standard, and 3 ft gauge limited to the mountain and forestry secondary lines.
Actually the Russian inch (vershok) was 1.75 British inches.The larger unit was arshin which is 28 inches (16 vershoks) also known as a pace. They did have line which was a tenth of an inch. 60 inches was 34 2/7 vershoks in Russian units.
Different train Guage? Don't you mean rail Guage?
TL; DR: To prevent enemy invading the country using trains.
You forgot to mention that Australia built its railways on three different gauges.
Try about 4 when you include the very narrow gauge like puffing billy.
Also that Queensland Australia had the first mainline narrow gauge railway
To gauge things in Australia currently it needs a "Gauge Commission" because the government is making a right cocck up of domestic and international policy.
I like how none of the Australian states (colonies at the time I guess) communicated with each other to create an official shared standard. Being an island you'd think it was ideally placed to create one, since it could be a fully closed-off system.
actually all the states had agreed to the Irish Broad gauge (5ft 3in) as all the engineers were irish, but then NSW replaced theirs with a scotsman, who changed thiers to the standard (4ft 8 1/2in) the others went cape gauge (3ft 6in) as it was cheaper. and thats how we have that cockup
Here in San Francisco we have three different track gauges currently in use, so it's definitely not limited by country alone.
BART uses broad gauge, San Francisco’s Cable Cars use narrow, and Muni Metro and historic streetcars use standard
One thing missing is that the 1844 Gauge Act in Britain also said 1600mm (5’3”) was to be used in Ireland as it was then part of Britain. 5’6” 1675mm was allowed in the British colony of India while they allowed the Australian colonies to use three different gauges. South Australia ended up with a few junctions with triple gauge tracks of 1067mm/1435mm/1600mm.
In North America as late as about 1850 half the railways were NOT 1435mm but all the most important railways were. The efficiency of adopting a common gauge was irrepressible.
Most of the railways in the South in the US were converted after the civil war, not during it. Remarkably about 11,500 miles of track was converted to 4’9” (12mm wider than standard gauge but close enough) over only two days in May 1886.
southern.railfan.net/ties/1966/66-8/gauge.html
Finally the “cost of railways” is not primarily determined by the gauge but by the expected speed and traffic (especially axle leadings) required. These determine the strength of bridges, earthworks to allow large radius curves and so on. The video alludes to this but incorrectly repeats the myth that the gauge comes first. It was this type of oversimplification by non engineers that created a lot of mayhem in the 19th century in the first place.
For an excellent discussion of all these issues I can’t recommend enough the following for both a general history and the particular example of Australia.
The Myth of the Standard Guage: Rail Guage Choice in Australia, 1850-1901
Author Mills, John Ayres
research-repository.griffith.edu.au/bitstream/handle/10072/366364/02Whole.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Worth watching too:
The Day The Gauge Changed
ua-cam.com/video/4v81Gwu6BTE/v-deo.html
The USA Erie Railroad and some adjoining lines were 6ft gauge until the 1880s conversion.
Australia's three gauge arrangement took place due to different policies made by the Colonies, pre-federation.
@@alexhando8541 True, but why didn’t their colonial masters in London say “We’ve figured this out, here’s what you should do.”?
Even South Australia and Victoria adopted different gauges within their territories. (The Victorian 2’6” may be forgivable)
Read Ayres monograph. John Whitton (the chief engineer of NSW railways from 1856, for those who don’t know) told a parliamentary inquiry at the time they should adopt the same gauge as soon as possible.
@@tjejojyj Victoria had and still has Broad Gauge and Narrow gauge although the narrow gauge lines that still exist are privately owned by Volunteer groups, and we also have Standard Gauge, at some point VIC and SA decided to build railways to connect the two states, they decided on Broad Gauge since most Victorian Railways were broad gauge at the time, hence why SA has Braod gauge
India had lacked Standard gauge in mainlines, India previously used meter guage tracks which exactly measures to 1 meter, later when India felt the need of more load bearing capacity Broad gauge was introduced, which is 1.6 meters, which is quickly being rolled out all over the expanse of Indian Rail network, even the places which are feasible, the previous meter gauge tracks are also converted to Broad Guage. Technically India uses three categories of Mainline Track guages Narrow Guage, mainly used in hilly areas, meter guage which is being quickly phased out in favour of broad guage's pros and finally broad guage which is Infact the most used track guage in India. Funnily in India we have two types of Narrow gauges, to identify them you need to look out for the locomotive nomenclature for the same, so for example in India if W stands for Broad guage (From an example loco WAP-7 where W stands for Wide for Broad Guage, A for AC electric Traction and P here stands for Passenger Load specific), Y stands for meter guage (Example YDM-4, where Y stands for Meter Guage, D for diesel locomotive and M stands for Multiple load i.e. These type of locomotives can used for traction of both passenger coaches and freight trains), similarly there are two versions of Narrow Guage, first N (Example NDM - 1, N here is for Narrow Guage and rest you just read) whose dimensions are 762 mm and second is Z (Example ZDM - 1, here Z represents a slightly narrower guage than the previous one) whose dimensions are 610 mm. Standard guages are finally being used in some lines of Delhi Metro, Mumbai metro, Kolkata Metro etc. to ease out tendering and manufacturing process of Metro rakes.
one word : WAG-12b
I used to make fun of Railway nerds! Guess what? I have turned into one!😂😂😂
@@WheelOfThought Nothing bad in becoming one 😀
5:20
Train operator: How many containers do I need to carry
Industries: Yes
Thats Indian Railway for you
Richard Trevithick, please (not Robert). He had no involvement with track gauges - he built his locomotives for existing lines, which happened to be of standard gauge.
oh, so now I understand why rail gauge here is narrower. It's mountainous here and there are many turns to bypass mountains.
Your Swiss?
One of the few things the video gets right, it seems.
New Zealand uses narrow gauge (the widest of narrow gauges, but still narrow gauge) precisely because so many of its tracks* have to traverse some pretty extreme mountainous terrain. And there used to be a fair number of (small) towns where your options for getting there other than by train were limited to taking a canoe or the like up a river, or walking/riding a horse through large sections of forest that had what might generously be called a track if you stretched the definition a bit (often one or the other for a given town). Such towns were often served by mixed traffic trains (that is, a few times a week, the goods train going through would have a passenger carriage or two tacked on and actually stop), too.
* back in the day before the government first substantially liberalised its rather draconian regulations regarding road usage and construction, and then privatized the railways (later/recently buying them back as mismanagement and maleficence had destroyed much of the network and left most of the rest in a very sorry state)
As big a problem is the "loading gauge", the physical size of train that can be accommodated. This varies widely even around areas where the track gauge is the same. France and the uk share a rail gauge, but french trains are much wider and higher than uk lines can accept.
Japanese narrow gauge trains have a bigger loading gauge than most uk trains.
Also, the Russian rail gauge is wider, not narrower than standard.
@SteelRodent With respect, that's incorrect about the critical tunnels being in London. Though structure gauges varied slightly between different railways, most kept the same structure gauge throughout their length - tunnels everywhere would be the limiting factor. Though some lines e.g. the Southern Railway's Hastings line - were 'tighter' than normal.
The really tight tunnels in London are the deep-level 'tube' lines of the Underground - only Tube trains can fit, though obviously those same small trains can and do run on full-size railway lines in many places in the suburbs, since their track is Standard gauge.
At 5:31 Komolapur Railway station, Dhaka, Bangladesh. This is the largest railway station in Bangladesh and it has dual gauges (you can see in video ), Meter gauge and Broad gauge.
Do Bangladesh has same gauge length as in India? 1676mm?
@@shubham4845 yes they used both 1676 gauge ( as most of the engine they used are purchased from India) and meter gauge
@@shubham4845 yes bhai otherwise how will we operate *MOITRI EXPRESS*.
Bd isn't Pakistan that we need to fend them off.
😅🙏 They are friendly and lovely. 🙏
Btw did you know IND-BD just reopened the old HALDIBARI-CHILLAHATI express which was cut off during the Liberation war of 1971 ? Yes both the countries came together and re-opened it to commemorate the Swarnim Vijay Divas of 16 December.
Wow! Sottie bhavini BD te eto sundor Station ache! Nice yaar! 😅 That's really cool! Asben ghurte epare. Valobasa roilo🙏
@@WheelOfThought Haldibari - Chilahati was closed in 1965 Indo - Pak war, not in 1971 war.
The story I heard about the Russian Standard Gauge is that the Czar brought in American railroad engineers to pioneer Russian railways. It happens that the Americans in question were from the South where the standard was 5 Feet . If this is true (no promises...there are so many stories!), you could say that the USSR and the Confederacy shared the same track gauge!
I was on Sakhalin Island (Russia) in 2003, and the tracks there were Japanese standard gauge (42"), because that part of the island was Japanese until the end of WW2. I hear about 3 years ago they finished gauge conversion to Russian Standard gauge. (It was cool while it lasted!)
You are "on the wrong tracks" regarding the Russian gauge and there are many over-simplifications in this piece
You put good effort into making and editing of this video, but there are several mistakes that need to be corrected. I rate 3/10.
The story that I heard was that the first rail wagons (horse drawn at collieries) had the flange on the outside of the wheel and that the rail gauge was 5 foot and when the flange was changed to the inside of the wheel the same gauge was kept hence the standard gauge now in use Not sure if this story is true but it sounds like it could be.
Fun fact
The Ffestiniog Railway in North Wales was the first railway to carry passengers on a gauge less than Standard Gauge (4ft 8.5in)
It’s gauge is 1ft 11.5 in
When building a railway, the most important gauge is not the track, but the Loading Gauge, which is an imaginary template through which the train and carriages have to fit. This will define the minimum distance between adjacent tracks, the height of lineside and overhead structures, and how much clear space is needed to the side. It will also determine the size of bridges and tunnels. Narrow gauge is cheaper and easier to build in mountainous country for just that reason, and some of them will remain for the forceable future as there is no space to convert them to a broader gauge.
In Africa you will find narrow gauge being used on railways that have enough space for standard or even broad gauge. The reason is that is is cheaper to build the track bed to carry the weight. Even though the track is narrow, the loading gauge is often the same as for standard gauge so the load carrying limits can be higher than for normal narrow gauge.
In india,its broad gauge in 99% routes
Have you travelled 100% of india? 😂
@@ayandey137 😂👍🏻 good question 🤣
I have traveled in broad, meter and narrow gauge trains in India.
Loading gauge is as important as rail gauge. Axle load and loading gauge determine wagon loads as much as rail gauge.
The reason for the broader gauge of Spain is to difficult a French invasion. Yes, that is.
thats a widespread myth, the broader gauge of Spain was to have bigger machines to climb steaper with more powefull machine,beacause Spain has many MANY montains
Most countries don't use different gauges. The standard for most countries was the standard gauge of 4 foot 8 1/2 inches of the British Empire. Even Americans adopted this gauge. The only major nation using a different gauge is Russia who adapted a different gauge to slow down invasions from Europe. They still use a 5 foot gauge.
There are poorer nations that used narrow gauge railways because of the lower expense in construction, but major industrialized nations tended to follow the British.
the biggest reason for standard gauge being the most used is easy,The British Empire, and that most of the worlds early railways were built by Engineers and used trains from, or trained by people from the UK
Got it in one
The Stevenson gauge is much older than 1825. Stevenson chose 4ft 8 1/2 because that was the gauge in use on the colliery tramways he was used to working with and whose coal his first railways were carrying.
Russia chose a larger gauge than Germany specifically to prevent Germany using the Russian rail network in time of war a decision that proved it wisdom in 1915-18 and 1941-44.
A lot of broad inaccuracies!
Stevenson "DID NOT" chose an arbitrary gauge: he just used the Leeds-London track that was used by horse carts to transfer coal,as a gauge is much smoother the a road and a horse can pull more coal.
The Gauge width was sized on a horse, being able to fit and walk without space wastes. Brunell went for a much wider gauge as it allows for more space inside a modern train and a smoother ride, but it forced wider turns and it was not compatible with he more widespread "Coal gauge.
Russia has a "WIDER" (1520mm) gauge then Germany ( Stevenson's 1435mm), not the other way around.
60% - standard gauge 1435mm
#Indian Broad gauge 1676mm
#Iberian broad gauge 1668mm
#Russian broad gauge 1524mm
Spain has at least 3 gauges: Iberian Gauge (RENFE) Standard Gauge (RENFE/AVE) and Metre Gauge (RENFE/FEVE, Euskotren, some Catalan railways, several tramways, railways around Alicante etc.)
Quite a few inaccuracies in this video. There were more gauges in Britain than just Stephenson’s and Brunel’s (there were 5 ft gauge lines in East Anglia). The standard gauge didn’t start in 1825, it was older, being the customary gauge for horse-drawn tramways (used for transporting coal) in the north-east of England.
And Russian gauge was broader than standard gauge used by the Germans.
And you should have explained the benefits of a narrower gauge (tighter curves, so better in mountains).
Good understanding .thx
In Bangladesh 🇧🇩
We have both metre gauge and broad gauge.
We also have tracks called dual gauge consisting of both the gauges. 🥰🥰
We are really uncommon in the world.
Broad 1600mm and standard 1435mm mixed gauge third rail track also in Melbourne, Victoria Australia in the area closer to the centre of Melbourne where there is not always space to keep the two gauges in use separate. Drivers view follows.
The 1600mm is dominant for intrastate and passenger use with the standard gauge used for interstate movements to most of the rest of Australia. The pointwork gets a but complicated with recent standard gauge conversions just adding to the complication and slowing most movements down : ua-cam.com/video/_uhNYvBvKDc/v-deo.html
So is the universal standard gauge used sorta like a middle ground/sweet spot in-between narrow and broad for most areas around the world?
Yes
No...India uses predominantly broad gauge 1.676mm and standard guage 1,435 mmfor urban metro...narrow in some mountainous areas...metre guage (1,000 mm)is being replaced by broad guage now...some urban mono rail too separately
No, it just happened to be the ancient wagonway track groove width which was adopted from the grooves made in Roman roads by their wagons and chariots. You don't think Stephenson deliberately came up with a crazy track width of 4' 8.5" do you. On the other hand Brunel did specify his Broad Gauge originally at 7' 0" which is a proper dimension
Spain: I will use different rails.
Portugal: OK, what size?
spain: now it's over, i'm going to switch to standard dimensions.
Portugal: OH COME ON!!!
And then there's Australia, where the 6.5 inch difference in gauges in Victoria (wide gauge) and NSW (standard gauge) had no engineering merits, and to this day results in track on routes between the states either being duplicated, or being dual gauge. This mess arose despite the issue of different gauges already being raised before the lines were built.
Don't forget 1067mm "narrow" gauge (3' 6"), used in all states except New South Wales and Victoria.
Excellent training. Cheers!
India currently uses the widest gauge.
However their metro systems use standard gauge for easy transfer of technology
I find it interesting that cars have the same gauge as trains-it makes it possible for modified pickups to ride rails for maintenance. I wonder if that choice of car gauges was intentional.
India uses atleast 3 different gauges, for different regions and purposes.
that is really complicated
@@sodinc That's why government is converting a lot of narrow gauges (N/Z) to broad gauge (W).
Not all though.
@@SupreetoSaha i guess your wide gauge isn`t the same as our one in Russia
@@sodinc
Our Wide gauge is 5'6" (1,676 mm). Russia's?
@@SupreetoSaha it was 1524 mm but then was narrowed a bit to 1520 mm (the trains are the same, it just made connection of wheels with rails less loose)
This show was excellent. Learning about railroad track gauges was nice.
If something as critical as getting the German and Russian gauges backwards is in this video and has remained uncorrected then I have doubts about the veracity of anything in any of this channel's videos.
@3:50 in fact it is Germany which had/has narrower gauge - 1435mm. Russia used and still uses Southern US gauge - 1524 mm (60 in or 5ft)
The railways in the pre civil war South were reset to the northern gauge as the US armies conquered rail lines. Railroads were a significant part of Grant' s resupply. Unlike the Confederate Army, Grant' s did not have to live off the land so could burn houses and crops along the way. By the end of the war most southern railroads were standard gauge. The rest soon followed.
I do not have a good reason to disagree but would like to read more if you have a good source.
I sort of remember reading it in a history of the Civil War in the western part of the confederacy.
In Bulgaria we also have 2 gauge tracks. The sandard is the main one for most of the network but we also have 3 lines of very narrow gauge (from them only 1 is still in use). 2 of those went true a mountain where standard gauge trains would not be capable of treversing (at the time the line was build).
2:51 XD my favorite train, aproaching to one of my favorite stations of Barcelona
Thanks. Always wanted to know them but none would a short and concise version of the explanation.
Why is the audio sound like it’s being read by a robot?
Lmao in Brazil we have 4 types of gauges
why did he put a standard gauge CSX locomotive when he said broad guage
Australia could choose whatever width they wanted, because there was an almost ZERO chance of the rail network linking up with another nation
India is the largest user of broader 1676mm gauge...
Nice that you used Clips from around the world and not only from the US or the UK 👍
I’d go with Brunel’s Broad Gauge
L for UK not following Brunel Gauge, UK should not have the issues of todays cramped trains.
Then you are an idiot. By the time Brunel came up with the broad gauge the standard had already been set, and the use of a wider gauge was only ever going to be a waste of money. Also after a certain point which happens to be around standard gauge, the law of diminishing returns sets in and you get less and less benefit for the increased cost of a wider gauge.
Japan's kinda all over the place. They use standard gauge on all Bullet train lines along with most private companies (Toei, Keisei, Keikyu, Hankyu, Hanshin, Kintetsu). Their national standard is 1067mm on which some trains can still reach a respectable 130kph. There's even a few major lines which use Scotch gauge (1,372mm) in the Keio Line and the Shinjuku Line.
India broad gauge is 1676mm
Me again. Russia has a broad gauge, not narrow gauge as stated at 3.54
By the time rail tracks where laid in Spain, France had already invaded it twice in the same century. First in 1802 and then in 1821. 10 years later It was a matter of national security to build with a different gauge. Russia actually did the same because of Napoleon's invasion. It was not just random. Portugal has to suck up to whatever Spain does in many ways otherwise it would be blocked from ground transportation. I guess that fear of the Portuguese from being invaded by Spain it's just a myth.
Quite wrong. Portugal and Spain used different gauge track, although it was a small difference and they were mostly compatible with each other. They ended up meeting in the middle and creating the Iberian gauge
Trevithick's name was Richard, not Robert...
I have heard “gauge” more then i ever needed to.
Thanks
No, Russia is 60" whilst Germany is standard, 56.5".
I heard the guage is based on old wagons that used 2 horses side by side, obviously for the large machinery on tracks now it would be better if the tracks were farther apart
Ireland's guage is said to be a compromise between Brunel and Stephenson. It's unique to Ireland (north and south), and parts of Australia and Brazil. It's used nowhere else in the world.
Russian railroads were built as the southern American states - 60 inch gauge - 1524mm. Later it is changed to 1520. It is broader than the German gauge.
also, some countries can change bogies by simply lifting the carrages ( cars) off one set of bogies and placeing the cars back on another set for a different size track.
Very good explanation!
In Romania we have the standard gauge.
We have the soviet standard only a few kilometers, to connect with the Republic of Moldova. In fact, on the first stop, the boggies are changed to standard.
Narrow gauges is still used in logging industry, but the number of kilometers are decreasing dramatically.
Narrow gauges is now used for turism.
I invite you to visit them.
We had a ingenios sistem in Timișoara. The train gauge and the tram gauge is the same. On the train station, the rails could be connected and the train brought merchandise for the factories which back then was in the middle of the city. The tracks was deteriorating rapidly.
The sistem is no longer in use.
Germany uses mostly standard gauge with a very few specialist railroads using 1000mm (the HSB in the Harz is the best known and largest)
0:33 the way this part is shot, caused me for a moment to think it was just a model.
What gauge would you recommend for an area with hills
Russia has a broader gauge than germany, not as said in the Film, that was the problem
So most countries use the same gauge.
Well explained. This is an interesting and useful knowledge.
Different gauges lead to interesting solutions. For many years, we had the Railship train ferries on a route between Travemünde in Gernany and Hanko in Finland (later Turku). The bogies were changed in the Hanko harbour, like on a assembly line, a remarkably fast system.
At the Polish-Soviet border that was exactly how it was done on the Soviet Railways car I was on, and continued to Moscow. The cars were jacked up, with guests still on board, or at least we stayed on board, and the wide gauge wheel sets were rolled under to replace the standard gauge sets. When the workers discovered some Playboy magazines in the trash, their shouts attracted our attention. Doubtless part of a capitalist plot to undermine the morale and solidarity of the working class.
Form there it was on to the Trans-Siberian, which I definitely recommend.
@@Dutch_Uncle That would have been the Parizh-Vost? (Paris to Moscow). I would have taken that but it ran on the wrong day of the week, instead I caught the Moscow-Berlin 'Strizh', which is a Talgo train, fitted with automatic gauge-changing axles. As I recall, it drives very slowly through a section of track where the wheels automatically change their gauge, but I was mostly asleep at the time so only vaguely remember it. The Strizh was, I suppose, a normal-sized train (I was quite happy later on in the 'Trenhotel' Talgo in Spain); but it felt very cramped compared with the spacious carriages on the 'Rossiya' (train 001/002 on the Trans-Siberian), which I also definitely recommend.
Come to Oz where at one stage you had to change trains often.
Peterborogh had a turntabe for all guages.
These days main passenger and freight lines are standard guage but some of Qld is still narrow guage, Adelaide passenger rail is broad guage making freight movement impossible. and the little of Tasmania with rail is narrow guage
Trevithick and especially the Stephenson's did much to develop modern railways of course but systems using wagons rolling along rails called wagonways had been in use for at least a couple of centuries. The one serving the collieries around Easington in County Durham had over 100 miles of track. The wagons would be horse drawn but the military demand for horses made them expensive. When the first locomotive builders got going they were making machines to replace horses and, as you say, just built to whatever gauge their colliery system used and it so happened that the systems in the north east used a 4'8" gauge or, as they got linked together, could be regauged to that relatively easily and so Stephenson's arbitrary standard gauge was born. The Stephensons later determined that trains ran better if there was a little play between wheel and rail- it was easier to regauge the track than the rolling stock so the extra half inch was added.
Russia adopted a wider than standard five foot gauge.
Lots not covered in this.
Brazil uses a mixture of narrow 1000mm and broad 1600mm gauge as well as some standard gauge.
Amazingly little know is the mixed gauge running with occasional use of broad gauge power of 1600mm gauge to pull metre gauge trains on third rail track with converter wagons to line up couplings. If you think this is impossible look at the wheelsets at the rail in this clip :
ua-cam.com/video/-Q3qjhWlldo/v-deo.html
It seem so common in Brazil that the poster makes no comment to identify this amazing arrangement. Sometimes have narrow gauge helpers at the tail on eight wheel trucks.
Looks like surplus US power re-gauged.
Could you please tell me where you got the stock footage for the first steam engine showed with the number plate 378.78? Its the one to be seen in the first 2 seconds of the video.
I'm just curious because I've worked at that exact engine a while back.
The originator of this video would not know the answer since the other images are randomly shown without regard to the narration.
My do most countries use different railway gauges? Good question, since most countries use the same railway gauge.
As far as I know, Bahnhof Jenbach in Austria is the only train station that has rails of three different gauges: 760 mm on the Zillertalbahn, 1000 nm on the Achenseebahn, and 1435 mm (normal gauge) on the Inntalbahn.
1,000 nanometre gauge? Blimey- that's some precision engineering!
@@timothyruffle7718 Apparently, it's a railway for the Litte People, and fits neatly under the staircase.
@@timothyruffle7718 HO models are made by Liliput.
Latour de Carol (La Tor de Querol) in the Pyrenees, also. And three different electrification systems. French SNCF standard gauge from Toulouse on 1500v DC, Rodalies de Catalunya suburban trains from Barcelona on Spanish 5'6" 3000v DC, and the metre-gauge Ligne de Cerdagne ('Train Jaune') to Villefranche on 850v DC side-contact third rail.
In 1825 Stephenson used a guage of 4' 8" for the Stockton and Darlington Railway (later the gauge was widened by half an j ch). In 1830 he used a gauge of 4' 8.5" for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. The latter gauge became standard guage. Prior to the standardisation act for the main lines any gauge could be used; the guage had to specified in any new Bill for a public railway brought before Parliament. Broad gauge tracks at a 7' 0.25" gauge could still be laid provided the Bill explained why (typically a direct junction with the GWR lines already running on that gauge. Also allowed were narrow guage public railways. Private railways could be to any guage as they did not need an Act of Parliament to approve them.
The BART system in the San Francisco Bay Area uses a broad gauge. Hearing that it's better for higher speeds in turns, this makes sense now.
It also result in a cost issue. Standard equipment cannot be used for renew tracks and selling old stock is more difficult.
Doesn't make sense to me at all. The supposed benefits of higher speeds are disproved by the high speed trains which now run on standard gauge at 350 km/h, more than twice the speed of BART. Rolling stock and their bogies (wheelsets) have to be individually specified and made in limited quantities, whereas standard gauge stock is now mass produced as particular trainsets, bringing cost of replacements down substantially rather than small orders for one particular operator.
I heard the broad gauge was to combat the intense crosswind for a planned line over the Golden Gate Bridge which never ended up happening. This was before engineers developed different methods to enable things like HSR.
@@doujinflip Makes sense
@@davidbennetts616 BART was built before HSR technology so this was the alternative at the time.
I was always taught that the reason we use standard gauge is due the drag coefficient. narrow gauge is unstable in high speed turns, but has less drag between the wheels on the tracks. wide gauge has more drag on turns but is more stable for high speeds. Standard gauge is the best & worst of both, so it's better for long runs, tight turns, switching, and all around better overall since it can be calculated and the trains can be adapted for the wear on the tracks and wheels.