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Sep 25, 2023 · Philip R. Hastings. History of track gauge: The gauge of a railroad is the distance between the inside vertical surfaces of the head of the rail. Standard gauge is 4 feet, 8-1/2 inches. This is the gauge used when steam railroading began. It became the common gauge of Britain, North America, and Western Europe — except for Spain, Portugal ...
Model gauge. 16.5 mm ( 0.65 in) Prototype gauge. Standard gauge. HO or H0 is a rail transport modelling scale using a 1:87 scale (3.5 mm to 1 foot). It is the most popular scale of model railway in the world. [1] [2] The rails are spaced 16.5 millimetres (0.650 in) apart for modelling 1,435 mm ( 4 ft in) standard gauge tracks and trains in HO.
experiment in standards adoption. In the 1860s, breaks in gauge were pervasive across the U.S. railway network, with railroads constructed in as many as 23 distinct gauges (Siddall 1969). By the 1880s, this count had e ectively narrowed to two: 5'0'' gauge in the South, and 4'8.5'' (\standard") gauge throughout the rest of the country.
Feb 18, 2000 · Thus, the standard U.S. railroad gauge of four feet, eight and a half inches derives from the specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Specs and bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse’s ass came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots ...
In railroad: The railroad in continental Europe …made to adapt the English standard gauge of 4 feet 8.5 inches (1,435 mm), despite the fact that it was common throughout western Europe (save in Ireland, Spain, and Portugal) as well as in much of the United States and Canada. It was the deliberate policy of Spain, and thereby… Read More
Apr 25, 2017 · The Jungfrau railway line in Switzerland is classified as a meter gauge railway. The railway runs 5.6 miles from the town of Kleine Scheidegg to Jungfraujoch which is known as the highest railway station in Europe. The railway runs on the Monch and Eiger mountains and reaches a peak altitude of 11,332 feet above sea level at Jungfraujoch making ...
There are a number of viral social media posts ( like this one that ask why the US standard railroad gauge width is such an unusual size, and trace it back thousands of years to conclude it is related to the size of Roman chariots and the ruts they made, which influenced generations of successive roads, tracks and railroads through to today.
