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As railways developed and expanded one of the key issues to be decided was that of
the rail gauge (the distance between the two rails of the track) which should
be used. The eventual result was the adoption throughout a large part of the world of a standard gauge allowing
inter-connectivity and the inter-operability of trains. The distance between the inner
sides of the rails in this gauge is 1435 mm (4 feet 8.5 inches). Currently 60% of the
world's railway lines are built to this gauge.
In the United Kingdom the standard gauge was at first 4 feet 8
inches but it was soon widened slightly. In the United States, because
some early trains were purchased from the UK, parts of the rail system, mainly in the north-east, adopted the same gauge.
However, until well into the second half of the 19th century the UK and the
USA had several different gauges of track. The American gauges slowly converged as the advantages of equipment interchange became
more and more apparent; the destruction of much of the South's broad gauge
system in the American Civil War hastened this trend.
Origin
There is no good reason for this particular gauge to have become the standard, other than perhaps it was more widespread than
any other. In fact, many engineers have considered it less than ideal. A smaller gauge offers cheaper construction but at the
cost of restricted speeds owing to reduced stability. Broader gauges are more stable at speed and allow larger, wider, heavier
loads.
In the UK, a Royal Commission in 1845 reported in favour of the 4 ft 8.5 in gauge on the
grounds that its network was eight times larger than that of the rival 7 ft 0.25 in (2140 mm) gauge adopted principally by the
Great Western Railway. The subsequent Gauge Act of 1846
ruled that new railways should be built at 4ft 8.5in, but nevertheless allowed the broad gauge companies to continue expanding
their networks. After an intervening period of mixed-gauge operation (tracks were laid with three running-rails), the Great
Western finally converted all of its network to the standard gauge in 1892.
A popular urban legend traces the origin of the 4 ft 8.5 in gauge even
further back, pointing to the evidence of rutted roads dating from the Roman
Empire.
See also: Broad gauge, Narrow gauge
External Link
In model railroading, Standard gauge was originally
an effort by Lionel Corporation to corner the U.S. market in the early
years of the 20th century. Lionel standardized its offerings on three-rail track with a gauge of 2 1/8 inches between the outer rails, making it
incompatible with Gauge 1 offerings from European manufacturers. Lionel then
registered a trademark on Standard Gauge. Other American companies followed Lionel's lead, standardizing on Lionel's new standard
but calling it Wide gauge in order to avoid infringing on Lionel's
trademark.
Standard gauge fell out of favour in the 1930s because of its high cost, and Lionel
discontinued its Standard gauge offerings in 1940.
Although scale modeling was not of primary concern, Standard gauge's scale is generally accepted at 1:26.59, making it
somewhat smaller than G scale.
More recently, standard gauge has come to mean scale modelling in which the track is accurately scaled to
real-world standard gauge. This is opposed to narrow gauge modeling, which
models real-world narrow gauge, or off-scale modeling, where track is not true to scale, such as in O gauge.
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