How we got our real railroad gauge

This story has been around since before the internet.  Unfortunately this has largely been debunked as Roman chariots were not built to such exacting standards. Only a few chariots were ever discovered and they varied, being that the horses themselves were various sizes.

This is an interesting story and it probably has some truth or a lot of truth.  I thought that chariots were out of favor as war machines by the time of Roman Empire but I don't know for sure.  Perhaps is was two horses  pulling a wagon.

Another reason is that the standard gauge was selected was probably because it was the biggest gauge that could be built at a reasonable cost.  Some early railroads, such as the Erie, were built to a five foot gauge.  Others were built smaller than the standard gauge.  The large Erie gauge railroad cost much more to build per mile than the standard gauge at that time.  The smaller gauges, such as 3 foot, didn't carry enough cargo.  The 3 foot gauges were only used in mountains, etc.

It is probably too bad that a 5 foot gauge wasn't selected.  It would make a "Big Boy" a "Real Big Big Boy."  Try getting a model of one of those around an O-27 curve. 

In any, case it is interesting topic.  NH Joe

It was the Pacific Railway Act, signed by president Lincoln, that finally nailed down the gauge in the US. I believe that the gauge on the Erie was 6 foot.   A lot of railroaders today wish Lincoln had picked the Erie gauge.   There are a lot of stories around about the universal wheels, which had a very wide tread to run on different gauges. They did not do well at turnouts and were the cause of many derailments. 

Totally untrue!!!!    The real story is:

The first "railroad" was laid out in England with the "rails", actually wood railings, laid 5 feet apart. The flanges on the wheels were on the OUTSIDE of each wheel, and everything worked just fine, as the draft horses pulled the wagons.

Then, they needed to curve the rails a bit, ignorer to continue on to their destination. When the draft horses suddenly could NOT pull the carriages/wagons through the curve, it took some investigation but they eventually discovered that the flanges on the OUTSIDE of each wheel would NOT negotiate a curve. Now what to do, as the wood "rails" were already laid. 

Someone figured out that by putting the flanges on the INSIDE of the wheels, the draft horses could easily pull the carriages/wagons through the curves. Thus all the wheels on the carriages/wagons were "corrected".

Instead of a 5 foot gauge (measuring across the OUTSIDE of the "rails"), the new gauge was 4 feet 8 1/2 inches between the INSIDE of the "rails". We now that as STANDARD GAUGE to this day.

And modelers didn't get the word, and are stuck with five feet.  I like Hot's version.

I thought it was interesting...from the standpoint of how something as arbitrary as the wheel gauge of a locomotive impacted/limited aerospace technology based on the ability to transport it.

I always wondered why a seemingly random number as 4 feet 8 and 1/2 inches became a standard...just thinking a nice even number would have made things easier...but that's just IMO...lol.

I've ridden in passenger cars on both five-foot (1,524mm - 1,520mm in the USSR) and many narrow gauge lines.

Five-foot gauge is better if the track conditions are identical.    Just my opinion (and my rear-end's opinion), of course.

Visit Pompeii sometime. You can step across the roadways using the flat stones set into and reaching above them which have cuts through them to allow for the easy passage of chariot wheels, as well as for the occasional flowing water. I never measured the distance between the openings among the stones pavers, but I have walked on them when I taught history of architecture there.

Of course, I've walked down railroad tracks, too, and in my  mind's eye, I do see them as similar in width. However, it was decades ago that I walked the streets of Pompeii, so my impression is only a vague one, comparing the distance apart of the chariot grooves with track rails.

FrankM

Moonson posted:

I never measured the distance between the openings among the stones pavers, but I have walked on them when I taught architecture there.

Of course, I've walked down railroad tracks, too, and in my  mind's eye, I do see them as similar in width. However, it was decades ago that I walked the streets of Pompeii, so my impression is only a vague one, comparing the distance apart of the chariot grooves with track rails.

FrankM

There was a recent show on the history channel about digitally copying Pompeii just in case the volcano erupts again. They discovered the streets were set up as one way only with curbs cut out to accommodate the turning of the carts. So I would guess there was probably a Roman standard for cart widths. 

Years ago I read where the 4' 8 1/2" was derived from the width between the wagon wheels on horse drawn carriages.  Remember that early railroads used re purposed carriages for passenger cars.  In railroad's early years there were a number of different track gauges in the United States before they were standardized.  I've read that most of the railroads in the southern states used a 5 foot gauge until around 1886 when they converted to what we now know as standard. 

Well, here we go again.  Hot Water is correct - it is a hoary old pre-internet chestnut that was given new life by instant electronic transfer.  

  The book The American Railroad Network 1861-1890 indicates the following gauges in use in the U.S. and Canada in 1861: (Number of Railroads), Gauge

(14) 6'0"

(21) 5'6"

(2) 5'4"

(63) 5'0"

(39) 4' 10"

(1) 4' 9.25"

(210) 4' 8.5"

 The thing you have to remember about early railroads is that the people who built them viewed them as a way of quicker delivery to THEIR OWN SPECIFIC CUSTOMERS. To that end they had zero interest in anyone else having the means to deliver product quickly to said customers.  Because of this it took quite awhile for people to realize that if you did have a common gauge you would put your immediate customers at risk from the standpoint of losing business but you also had the possibility of expanding your own business way beyond anything you could possibly realize at a local level.  In the U.S. the choice of 4'8.5" was driven by simple economics - more railroads had that gauge than any others and Hot Water's explanation is one of several which address this choice.  

From The American Railroad Network 1861-1890 page 12 we have the following:

"When railroads were first constructed, their engineers experimented with different gauges. Each engineer tended to select the gauge which he thought best suited the needs of his particular road. Early British tramways had been built to varying gauges – as narrow as 3’ 4” to as wide as 4’ 6”. Benjamin H. Latrobe, reporting to Albert Gallatin in 1808, suggested that railroads might be built with a distance of 3.5 feet to 5 feet between the rails. When George Stephenson built his successful steam railroad in England, he finally settled on a gauge of 4 feet 8.5 inches. He was probably influenced in his choice by the English tramway and wagon gauges, but different writers present a number of explanations for his selection of exactly 4feet 8.5 inches."

[and none of them, I might add, mention Roman Chariots]. 

  ...and on page 13 of the same book

  "Most of the early British railroads adopted this gauge, but some experimented with other widths, the most important deviations being those of 5 feet and 7 feet. The latter gauge was adopted by the Great Western on the advice of its engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, a fanatical advocate of the broad gauge. The whole gauge controversy came to a head in Great Britain in 1845 when a Royal Commission was appointed to study the matter. The commission, reporting in 1846, recommended that in all future railroad construction a 4 foot 8.5 inch gauge be used and an Act of Parliament was passed to this effect. Throughout Europe generally the early railroads were built to this gauge. But there were exceptions. In Ireland 5 feet 3 inches was adopted after some experimentation. And on the continent examples of early deviant gauges are the Basle and Strassburg lines, with a width of 6 feet 3 inches, and the line from Ghent to Antwerp, which had a gauge of 3 feet 9 inches. By 1860 the prevailing gauge in Spain was 5 feet 6 inches and Russia’s Moscow line was 6 feet."

When the Pacific RR was chartered in Missouri, the wide gauge was chosen specifically because no interchange would ever be possible with the RRs east of the Mississippi. 

Then along came a pesky chap named Eads . . . .

What I find more interesting is that the N&W re-gauged its entire mainline to 4' 8.5" in 24 hours!

Moonson posted:

Visit Pompeii sometime. You can step across the roadways using the flat stones set into and reaching above them which have cuts through them to allow for the easy passage of chariot wheels, as well as for the occasional flowing water. I never measured the distance between the openings among the stones pavers, but I have walked on them when I taught history of architecture there.

Of course, I've walked down railroad tracks, too, and in my  mind's eye, I do see them as similar in width. However, it was decades ago that I walked the streets of Pompeii, so my impression is only a vague one, comparing the distance apart of the chariot grooves with track rails.

FrankM

Now I have a reason to visit Pompeii with a tape measure to settle this once and for all.  That looks like a pretty rough ride for any vehicle.  NH Joe

Big Jim posted:

What I find more interesting is that the N&W re-gauged its entire mainline to 4' 8.5" in 24 hours!

During what year, and how much trackage did the N&W have at that time?

New Haven Joe posted:

Moonson posted:

Visit Pompeii sometime. You can step across the roadways using the flat stones set into and reaching above them which have cuts through them to allow for the easy passage of chariot wheels, as well as for the occasional flowing water. I never measured the distance between the openings among the stones pavers, but I have walked on them when I taught history of architecture there.

Of course, I've walked down railroad tracks, too, and in my  mind's eye, I do see them as similar in width. However, it was decades ago that I walked the streets of Pompeii, so my impression is only a vague one, comparing the distance apart of the chariot grooves with track rails.

FrankM

Now I have a reason to visit Pompeii with a tape measure to settle this once and for all.  That looks like a pretty rough ride for any vehicle.  NH Joe

Hi Joe, That's what I concluded. I had a hard time picturing something (it seemed to my imagination) as fragile as wooden chariot wheels traveling along so hard and rough a journey. I theorized that maybe they spread sand or dirt over and among those tough stones, but I never heard one word verifying that from any tour guide or college class.

Who Knows?

FrankM

Big Jim posted:

What I find more interesting is that the N&W re-gauged its entire mainline to 4' 8.5" in 24 hours!

Quite a few roads did, including the MoPac, the SLIM&S, and the Frisco.  as standard gauge became standard, the roads had to adapt.  In fact, some roads changed twice!

The origins of the gauge are murky, there is evidence that some  Roman Chariots were spaced at 4' 8 1/2 " (I forget the unit of measurement in latin), but whether that actually was the origin via ruts of the carts in England is not so clear. I doubt the Romans had any one standard for the gauge of chariot wheels, the empire was a big place and it just wouldn't be that important to them, on the other hand the Roman legions might have had a standard, being a military unit, and they had the biggest presence in England during their occupation there, so it isn't impossible they used 4' 8 1/2 " and left enough ruts that British people continued to use that, just there is no proof of that. 

What is known is that the first engines in England were made at that gauge, and that carts were the likely reason why, given that the first railroads likely were horse drawn drams and carts converted from roadgoing ones. The first engines in the US came from England, so tracks were laid to that gauge by the early railroads. Once engines and rolling stock started being made here, gauges were all over the place though many railroads, either because they bought or copied UK engines and rolling stock, used that 4 foot 8 1/2" gauge. The Erie was 6 feet, some railroads were 5, and of course we had the narrow gauge railroads.  

The reason 4' 8 1/2" became "standard gauge" by law was easy, most of the trackage after the building of the transcontinental railroad were this gauge, using that meant the fewest amount of trackage needing to be converted, it made sense. 

Hot Water posted:

Big Jim posted:

What I find more interesting is that the N&W re-gauged its entire mainline to 4' 8.5" in 24 hours!

During what year, and how much trackage did the N&W have at that time?

The following is mostly taken from "The Norfolk & Western: a history" by Pat Striplin.
Many railroads in the south agreed ahead of time to change their track gauge on June 1, 1886. The N&W extended 408 miles from Norfolk, Va. to Bristol, Tn. On that day all trains were cancelled and gangs began pulling spikes, moving one rail until the gauge was reached. The work, planned so well in advance, went so well that the job was completed by early afternoon.

Big Jim and Hot Water, actually a lot more happened on 1 June 1886 (and on 31 May 1886).    On 2 February 1886 representatives of all of the important broad-gauge lines in the South meth at Atlanta, Georgia, to discuss ways and means of changing the gauge of more than 13,000 miles of track.  They decided to synchronize the changeover and the decision was made to do it on those two days.

  In each case the railroads in question began purchasing equipment with an eye to the changeover as well as pulling a certain percentage of existing rolling stock out of service and converting it before the changeover dates.  Since only one rail needed to be moved inward by 3.5 inches the track gangs on the railroads began smoothing roadbed, removing a number of spikes from the rail that was to be moved (remember no tie plates then just two spikes on either side of the rail on a tie). The outside spikes were left untouched and 2/3 of the inside spikes were removed on straight track and every other one on curved were drawn.  Then the distance the rail was to be moved over was measured and new inside spikes were driven into every third tie along the new line.  All of this was done before the end of May.

  On the day of the changeover at least 3 workmen were assigned to each mile of track.  On the L&N it was at least four and where there were curves and trestles the number was 5.  All of the preparation paid off. For example, on the L&N a section foreman and his gang changed 11 miles of track in four and a half hours.

  Ten roads made the change on 31 May: L&N, Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis, Memphis and Charleston, Alabama Great Southern, Cincinnati Southern, Cincinnati, Selma, and Mobile, Montgomery and Eufalal, Southwestern and Georgia, Pensacola and Atlanta, and Florida Railway and Navigation Company.  All of the other roads made the change on 1 June 1886.  On both days work was completed between 3:30 AM and 4 PM, during which time all train movements were suspended.  When traffic was resumed after 4 PM on 1 June 1886 the American railroad system was an integrated network.

From The American Railroad Netword 1861-1890 pp. 80-81

Thanks Robert. I'm sure there was a lot more involved in the change over that wouldn't fit on these pages. Pat Striplen noted in his book that once the track was opened, a money train took to the rails to pay off the "Folks Along The Line".

David Johnston posted:

It was the Pacific Railway Act, signed by president Lincoln, that finally nailed down the gauge in the US. I believe that the gauge on the Erie was 6 foot.   A lot of railroaders today wish Lincoln had picked the Erie gauge.   There are a lot of stories around about the universal wheels, which had a very wide tread to run on different gauges. They did not do well at turnouts and were the cause of many derailments. 

My first reaction was that can't be true.  By the time Lincoln became president,  the Central Pacific and Union Pacific already had extensive standard guage networks.  The federal law that indirectly provided funding for the transcontinental railroad had some specifications in it, but I suspect they generally reflected standard railroad practice.  

I've never heard of a "universal wheel".  I do know of one specific example of wheels made to be used on two guages causing a well publicized disaster.  They were the "compromise cars" of the LS&MS, which had a gauge fo 4' 10''.  Some of their cars had narrow flanges and wide treads so they could operate in interchange over the standard gauge NYC.  Here's a reference to the Wikipedia article.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angola_Horror

To check the accuracy of the statements that I was about to make, I did a bit of research on gauges.  Here's a link to a very good article on the subject that discusse some of the inter-gauge issues.  https://railroad.lindahall.org...ays/rails-guage.html

gibson man posted:

Something interesting...

Does the expression, "We've always done it that way!" ring
any  bells? The US standard railroad gauge (distance between
the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.  That is an exceedingly
odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that is the way
they built them in England, and Irish & English expatriates built
the US railroads. Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people
who built the pre railroad tramways, and that is the gauge
they used. Why did "they" use that gauge then?  Because the
people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools
that they used for building wagons, which used the same
wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel
spacing?  Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the
wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance
roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel
ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome
built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England)
for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the
initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of
destroying their wagon wheels.  Since the chariots were made
for (or by) Imperial Rome, they all had the same wheel
spacing.  The United States standard railroad gauge of 4
feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specification
for an Imperial Roman war chariot.   Specifications and
bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed
a specification and wonder what horse's *** came up with it,
you may be exactly right.

This is because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made
just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war-horses.

Now, the twist to the story...  There is an interesting
extension to the story about railroad gauges and horses'
behinds. When we see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch
pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides
of the main tank.  These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.
"Thiokol" makes the SRBs at their factory at Utah. The
engineers who designed the SRBs might have preferred to make
them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train
from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from
the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the
mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The
tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the
railroad track is about as wide as two horse's behinds.  So,
a major design feature of what is arguably the world's most
advanced transportation system was determined over two
         thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ***.

I regard to those rockets, the size wasn't related to the size of two horses as much as it had to do with the ratio of the width of cars to track.  In 1959, many cars had an extreme width of 10'8" - about 2.25 x the track guage.  The minimum clearance ion railroad tunnels was around 12 to 13 feet.  In Europe, the rockets would have been much narrower becuase their trains were not as wide as the US, and in the UK it would have been even less.  Wagon-Lits ahd special sleepers for the Night Ferry between London and Paris because standard European cars wouldn't clear the platforms in the  UK.

bigkid posted:

The origins of the gauge are murky, there is evidence that some  Roman Chariots were spaced at 4' 8 1/2 " (I forget the unit of measurement in latin), but whether that actually was the origin via ruts of the carts in England is not so clear. I doubt the Romans had any one standard for the gauge of chariot wheels, the empire was a big place and it just wouldn't be that important to them, on the other hand the Roman legions might have had a standard, being a military unit, and they had the biggest presence in England during their occupation there, so it isn't impossible they used 4' 8 1/2 " and left enough ruts that British people continued to use that, just there is no proof of that. 

 

What is known is that the first engines in England were made at that gauge, and that carts were the likely reason why, given that the first railroads likely were horse drawn drams and carts converted from roadgoing ones. The first engines in the US came from England, so tracks were laid to that gauge by the early railroads. Once engines and rolling stock started being made here, gauges were all over the place though many railroads, either because they bought or copied UK engines and rolling stock, used that 4 foot 8 1/2" gauge. The Erie was 6 feet, some railroads were 5, and of course we had the narrow gauge railroads.  

The reason 4' 8 1/2" became "standard gauge" by law was easy, most of the trackage after the building of the transcontinental railroad were this gauge, using that meant the fewest amount of trackage needing to be converted, it made sense. 

In many years of studying railroad history, I never heard of such a law.  Can you provide a reference for that.  From what we've ween on this thread it sounds more like a sequence of logical decisions by railroad managements.

"The act of March 3, 1863 (12 Sta. 807)[14] was:

AN ACT to establish the gauge of the Pacific railroad and its branches.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the gauge of the Pacific railroad and its branches throughout their whole extent, from the Pacific coast to the Missouri river, shall be, and hereby is, established at four feet eight and one-half inches."

This act set the gauge to be used by the railroads at four feet and eight and one-half inches, a gauge that had previously been used by George Stephenson in England for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (1830) and was already popular with railroads in the Northeastern states. Due in part to the 1863 Act the gauge would come to be widely (but not universally) adopted in the United States and is known as standard gauge. A common gauge choice allowed easy transfer of cars between different railroad companies and facilitates trackage rights between companies.

I found an old reference to the Roman Chariot basis theory in the October 1941 Model Builder

Robert S. Butler posted:

Well, here we go again.  Hot Water is correct - it is a hoary old pre-internet chestnut that was given new life by instant electronic transfer.  

 

I totally agree! This has come up many times over the years on this forum. When I first read it in the early 2000s I thought it was true but after a little research I agree with the above. Just a myth given new life by the internet.