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Apr 16, 2001 · The U.S. standard railroad gauge derives directly from the width of Imperial Roman war chariots. The standard U.S. railroad gauge is similar in width to the wheel spacing of Roman chariots. That ...
Track gauge. Originally, various track gauges were used in the United States. Some railways, primarily in the northeast, used standard gauge of 4 ft in ( 1,435 mm ); others used gauges ranging from 2 ft ( 610 mm) to 6 ft ( 1,829 mm ). As a general rule, southern railroads were built to one or another broad gauge, mostly 5 ft ( 1,524 mm ), while ...
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The Panama Railroad was originally 5 ft (1,524 mm) as in much of the Southern United States. This gauge was converted to 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 + 1 ⁄ 2 in) when the line was rebuilt in 2000. Nowadays only the ship handling trains along the Panama Canal, called mules, still have the 150 cm / 5 ft track. United States
History. As railways developed and expanded, one of the key issues was the track gauge (the distance, or width, between the inner sides of the rails) to be used. Different railways used different gauges, and where rails of different gauge met – a "gauge break" – loads had to be unloaded from one set of rail cars and reloaded onto another, a time-consuming and expensive process.
Country/territoryRailwayNational rail network Algiers Metro, ...80 km (50 mi)General Urquiza Railway (except for ...Sep 28, 2019 · The History Behind the US Standard Gauge for Railroad Tracks. The standard distance between the rails on a railroad in the United States is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. It seems like an incredibly odd measurement to have. It probably would have been easier to simply make it 5 feet or 4.5 feet.
Feb 18, 2000 · A NASA spokesperson confirms that railroad tunnel dimensions were a constraint that had to be taken into account when designing the SRBs. However, tunnel dimensions are less a function of track gauge than of rolling stock width. U.S. railroad cars are quite a bit wider than those in England because parallel tracks are placed farther apart.
The term “standard gauge” refers to the width of the tracks themselves. Standard gauge tracks have a distance of 4 feet, 8.5 inches (1,435 millimeters) between the inside edges of the rails. This may seem like an oddly specific measurement, but it’s actually based on a historical standard that was established in the early days of rail travel.
