The Battle of the Gauges

In class and in the readings for July 16th, we learned about Isambard Kingdom Brunel and his Great Western Railway, which is the route we actually took on our trip to Bristol. I was very interested in the so-called “Battle of the Gauges” that took place among the railroad companies during the mid-19th century. This conflict arose from the fact that during the railroad expansion between 1820-1850, different railroad companies were building tracks of different gauges, or sizes. The trains that ran on these tracks had to have wheels that fit the gauge of the track, so that passengers often had to switch trains mid-journey to ride on a differently gauged track. Eventually two gauges emerged as the most widely used in Great Britain: Brunel’s 7’ gauge, or wide gauge, and Stephenson’s 4’ 8.5”, or narrow gauge. The need for a standard-sized gauge was becoming apparent, and a debate raged over which gauge would win out as the standard. Brunel’s wide gauge allowed for larger and more comfortable coaches, and faster and smoother trains, but it was also much more expensive. Stephenson’s narrow gauge had strong precedents and was more widely used than the wide gauge, and it was also cheaper to build and operate than the wide gauge. In the end, Brunel died young, and the advantages of the narrow gauge won out over those of the wide gauge; 4’ 8.5” was adopted as a national, and later international, railroad standard.

There are interesting parallels between this historical anecdote and the advent of Bazalgette’s sewage system in London, which Professor Durant mentioned in class. Bazalgette famously calculated quite accurately what size sewage pipes would be necessary for a reasonable estimate of population growth in England; he doubled that number and that was the measurement he used for the sewage pipes. If he had not taken the initiative and doubled his calculation, the sewage pipes would have had to been replaced in the 1960’s, but Bazalgette’s sewage pipes are still used to this day in London because of his leap of faith. Had the wide gauge railway won out in the Battle of the Gauges, trains today would be able to do amazing things. They would be immeasureably more efficient, faster, and more comfortable. Unfortunately, unlike in the case of the London sewage system, cost efficiency won out over foresight, and we will most likely be stuck with narrow gauge railways for the foreseeable future.