Why do most countries use different railway gauges? 

At 3:45 it is backwards, Russia had and still has a wider rail gauge than Germany, Russia's track gauge is 1,520 mm and Germany has 1,435 mm

I love it. “60% use this. The others are either wider or narrower.”

Another fun reason why standard gauge got popular is that for a substantial period in the 19th century, if you wanted locos and rolling stock, Britain was pretty much your only place to go because they were the only people with a developed manufacturing base for it. And Britain used standard gauge, so it was cheaper and easier to just plan for that.

You are mistaken. Russia has a broader, not narrower gauge than Germany. 1,435 mm in Europe v 1,520 mm in Russia.

In India IR(Indian Railway) uses 3 different rail gauges. For the most cases IR uses broad gauges it's 1675 mm(1.6mtr) and if I'm not wrong it runs the fastest, heaviest and longest trains in the country and covers almost 90% of the railway network. For the less winder Standard gauges it is basically used for Rapid Urban Transit systems or what we locally call *Metro Trains*. India currently has 14 operational Metros in 14 cities and approximately 26 city metros are under-construction and also some of the existing are increasing its length. As you have mentioned it's 1. Cheaper 2. has less weight to carry on board 3. and the trade off is faster speed in an urban setting. As for the narrow gauges it's around 700mm in India and its very few tbh. They mostly are mountain railways and listen under UNESCO World Heritage. They are 1. Simla 2. Darjeeling 3. Nilgiri mountain Railways and yes they are slow as those are in tourist destinations and hilly resorts. But IR is planning on to change the tracks Anyway India is heading toward 100% electrification by 2023 and honestly surprisingly enough this will be finished in time. 🤧 I loved the video. 🙏 NAMASTEY.

Judging by the comments, there seem to be a lot of inaccuracies in this video

1:49 - His name was Richard Trevithick, not Robert.

Japan has 4 gauges. 22,301 km (13,857 mi) of 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in) (narrow gauge), of which 15,222 kilometres (9,459 mi) are electrified. Used mainly for general passenger and freight lines. 4,251 km (2,641 mi) of 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) (standard gauge), all electrified. Used mainly for high-speed lines (Bullet trains), subway lines, and some suburban lines. 96 km (60 mi) of 1,372 mm (4 ft 6 in), all electrified. Used mainly for Keiō Line branches and regional tram systems. (See 1372 mm gauge railways in Japan). 48 km (30 mi) of 762 mm (2 ft 6 in), all electrified, mostly regional. (from Wiki).

In Bangladesh, its mainly broad guage (5 ft 6 in) and metre gauge (3 ft 3 in) together in a single one, also known as dual gauge. Broad gauge helps to carry more passengers and payload while maintaining connectivity with neighboring India which is almost solely a broad gauge network now. Metre gauge are comparatively older ones which are still to be replaced by dual gauge or converted to broad gauge within 2030 or so.

Shouldn't the title be "Why do most countries use the same rail gauge?" 60% is a bigger number of something than 40% of something. Just asking for a friend.

Australia still has 3 different gauges in mainline use. Victoria has broad gauge at 5’3”, New South Wales has Standard gauge 4’8.5”, Queensland narrow gauge 3’6” and South Australia for a time had all three.

The reason for the broader (5 foot gauge) in Russia was because the imperial government in the 19th century employed an American engineer, George Whistler (father of the painter James McNeill Whistler) to design their rail network. He was most familiar with the construction of 5 foot gauge track, a very common gauge used in the US at the time.

*Because when the original systems in each country were built, a different gauge was chosen, and then that choice became the local "de facto" standard and was perpetuated as a matter of course.*

India uses broad gauge (1676mm). Smaller gauge lines do exist, but they are obsolete and being converted to the standard broad gauge.

The American south did not covert gauges until after the end of the civil war, and then it was done, if I remember right in one day (24 hours), the History Guy has an video on that.

stevenson said after that if he was doing it again he would add a couple of inches to the gauge!

At 5:31 "Dhaka Komlapur Railway station" we use two gauges at a single track.

Russia's broader track gauges is nOT by accident or coincidence.. It was Tsar Nicholas I who insisted that the Russian Empire used a different track gauge than other countries. and they reason is to prevent an invading force from using Russia's tracks to transport their supplies and weapons into the country. It prove to be a wise decision during WW2

The Iberian gauge was also made different from France to avoid an invasion through the Pyrenees.

Here in San Francisco we have three different track gauges currently in use, so it's definitely not limited by country alone.

The UK doesn’t use “standard gauge” - only Britain does! Northern Ireland runs on Irish Gauge. The Railway Regulation (Gauge) Act was enacted by the United Kingdom Parliament in 1846. It mandated the track gauge of 1,435 mm to be the standard for Great Britain and 1,600 mm to be the standard for Ireland including Northern Ireland.

One thing missing is that the 1844 Gauge Act in Britain also said 1600mm (5’3”) was to be used in Ireland as it was then part of Britain. 5’6” 1675mm was allowed in the British colony of India while they allowed the Australian colonies to use three different gauges. South Australia ended up with a few junctions with triple gauge tracks of 1067mm/1435mm/1600mm. In North America as late as about 1850 half the railways were NOT 1435mm but all the most important railways were. The efficiency of adopting a common gauge was irrepressible. Most of the railways in the South in the US were converted after the civil war, not during it. Remarkably about 11,500 miles of track was converted to 4’9” (12mm wider than standard gauge but close enough) over only two days in May 1886. southern.railfan.net/ties/1966/66-8/gauge.html Finally the “cost of railways” is not primarily determined by the gauge but by the expected speed and traffic (especially axle leadings) required. These determine the strength of bridges, earthworks to allow large radius curves and so on. The video alludes to this but incorrectly repeats the myth that the gauge comes first. It was this type of oversimplification by non engineers that created a lot of mayhem in the 19th century in the first place. For an excellent discussion of all these issues I can’t recommend enough the following for both a general history and the particular example of Australia. The Myth of the Standard Guage: Rail Guage Choice in Australia, 1850-1901 Author Mills, John Ayres research-repository.griffith.edu.au/bitstream/handle/10072/366364/02Whole.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Russia adopted 5 foot, following an American engineer's advice; at the time 1860s, Imperial Russia was on an Inch based measurement system. So 60 inches was an easily measured gauge. 5 ft was also the gauge of most of the Confederate States, and the change to Standard was done by Northern troops as they destroyed the Confederate system and rebuilt new lines in standard gauge for their own strategic purposes. After the Civil war, standard gauge was decreed the national standard, and 3 ft gauge limited to the mountain and forestry secondary lines.

Richard Trevithick, please (not Robert). He had no involvement with track gauges - he built his locomotives for existing lines, which happened to be of standard gauge.

As big a problem is the "loading gauge", the physical size of train that can be accommodated. This varies widely even around areas where the track gauge is the same. France and the uk share a rail gauge, but french trains are much wider and higher than uk lines can accept. Japanese narrow gauge trains have a bigger loading gauge than most uk trains. Also, the Russian rail gauge is wider, not narrower than standard.

I'm sorry but I'm obviously missing something here. The description says that around 60% of the world uses the 'standard' guage of 4'8½", yet the question is, "Why do most counties use different railway guages?" To me 40% is way less that 60% and that therefore most countries use the same guage!

You forgot to mention that Australia built its railways on three different gauges.

Laughs in India 1676 mm!

oh, so now I understand why rail gauge here is narrower. It's mountainous here and there are many turns to bypass mountains.

The story that I heard was that the first rail wagons (horse drawn at collieries) had the flange on the outside of the wheel and that the rail gauge was 5 foot and when the flange was changed to the inside of the wheel the same gauge was kept hence the standard gauge now in use Not sure if this story is true but it sounds like it could be.

5:20 Train operator: How many containers do I need to carry Industries: Yes

Fun fact The Ffestiniog Railway in North Wales was the first railway to carry passengers on a gauge less than Standard Gauge (4ft 8.5in) It’s gauge is 1ft 11.5 in

India had lacked Standard gauge in mainlines, India previously used meter guage tracks which exactly measures to 1 meter, later when India felt the need of more load bearing capacity Broad gauge was introduced, which is 1.6 meters, which is quickly being rolled out all over the expanse of Indian Rail network, even the places which are feasible, the previous meter gauge tracks are also converted to Broad Guage. Technically India uses three categories of Mainline Track guages Narrow Guage, mainly used in hilly areas, meter guage which is being quickly phased out in favour of broad guage's pros and finally broad guage which is Infact the most used track guage in India. Funnily in India we have two types of Narrow gauges, to identify them you need to look out for the locomotive nomenclature for the same, so for example in India if W stands for Broad guage (From an example loco WAP-7 where W stands for Wide for Broad Guage, A for AC electric Traction and P here stands for Passenger Load specific), Y stands for meter guage (Example YDM-4, where Y stands for Meter Guage, D for diesel locomotive and M stands for Multiple load i.e. These type of locomotives can used for traction of both passenger coaches and freight trains), similarly there are two versions of Narrow Guage, first N (Example NDM - 1, N here is for Narrow Guage and rest you just read) whose dimensions are 762 mm and second is Z (Example ZDM - 1, here Z represents a slightly narrower guage than the previous one) whose dimensions are 610 mm. Standard guages are finally being used in some lines of Delhi Metro, Mumbai metro, Kolkata Metro etc. to ease out tendering and manufacturing process of Metro rakes.

At 5:31 Komolapur Railway station, Dhaka, Bangladesh. This is the largest railway station in Bangladesh and it has dual gauges (you can see in video ), Meter gauge and Broad gauge.

TL; DR: To prevent enemy invading the country using trains.

Different train Guage? Don't you mean rail Guage?

In Bulgaria we also have 2 gauge tracks. The sandard is the main one for most of the network but we also have 3 lines of very narrow gauge (from them only 1 is still in use). 2 of those went true a mountain where standard gauge trains would not be capable of treversing (at the time the line was build).

The story I heard about the Russian Standard Gauge is that the Czar brought in American railroad engineers to pioneer Russian railways. It happens that the Americans in question were from the South where the standard was 5 Feet . If this is true (no promises...there are so many stories!), you could say that the USSR and the Confederacy shared the same track gauge! I was on Sakhalin Island (Russia) in 2003, and the tracks there were Japanese standard gauge (42"), because that part of the island was Japanese until the end of WW2. I hear about 3 years ago they finished gauge conversion to Russian Standard gauge. (It was cool while it lasted!)

So is the universal standard gauge used sorta like a middle ground/sweet spot in-between narrow and broad for most areas around the world?

You put good effort into making and editing of this video, but there are several mistakes that need to be corrected. I rate 3/10.

When building a railway, the most important gauge is not the track, but the Loading Gauge, which is an imaginary template through which the train and carriages have to fit. This will define the minimum distance between adjacent tracks, the height of lineside and overhead structures, and how much clear space is needed to the side. It will also determine the size of bridges and tunnels. Narrow gauge is cheaper and easier to build in mountainous country for just that reason, and some of them will remain for the forceable future as there is no space to convert them to a broader gauge. In Africa you will find narrow gauge being used on railways that have enough space for standard or even broad gauge. The reason is that is is cheaper to build the track bed to carry the weight. Even though the track is narrow, the loading gauge is often the same as for standard gauge so the load carrying limits can be higher than for normal narrow gauge.

Loading gauge is as important as rail gauge. Axle load and loading gauge determine wagon loads as much as rail gauge.

the biggest reason for standard gauge being the most used is easy,The British Empire, and that most of the worlds early railways were built by Engineers and used trains from, or trained by people from the UK

Could you please tell me where you got the stock footage for the first steam engine showed with the number plate 378.78? Its the one to be seen in the first 2 seconds of the video. I'm just curious because I've worked at that exact engine a while back.

The Stevenson gauge is much older than 1825. Stevenson chose 4ft 8 1/2 because that was the gauge in use on the colliery tramways he was used to working with and whose coal his first railways were carrying. Russia chose a larger gauge than Germany specifically to prevent Germany using the Russian rail network in time of war a decision that proved it wisdom in 1915-18 and 1941-44.

In Bangladesh 🇧🇩 We have both metre gauge and broad gauge. We also have tracks called dual gauge consisting of both the gauges. 🥰🥰 We are really uncommon in the world.

Good understanding .thx

Spain has at least 3 gauges: Iberian Gauge (RENFE) Standard Gauge (RENFE/AVE) and Metre Gauge (RENFE/FEVE, Euskotren, some Catalan railways, several tramways, railways around Alicante etc.)

2:51 XD my favorite train, aproaching to one of my favorite stations of Barcelona

The reason for the broader gauge of Spain is to difficult a French invasion. Yes, that is.

also, some countries can change bogies by simply lifting the carrages ( cars) off one set of bogies and placeing the cars back on another set for a different size track.

A lot of broad inaccuracies! Stevenson "DID NOT" chose an arbitrary gauge: he just used the Leeds-London track that was used by horse carts to transfer coal,as a gauge is much smoother the a road and a horse can pull more coal. The Gauge width was sized on a horse, being able to fit and walk without space wastes. Brunell went for a much wider gauge as it allows for more space inside a modern train and a smoother ride, but it forced wider turns and it was not compatible with he more widespread "Coal gauge. Russia has a "WIDER" (1520mm) gauge then Germany ( Stevenson's 1435mm), not the other way around.

I find it interesting that cars have the same gauge as trains-it makes it possible for modified pickups to ride rails for maintenance. I wonder if that choice of car gauges was intentional.

Quite a few inaccuracies in this video. There were more gauges in Britain than just Stephenson’s and Brunel’s (there were 5 ft gauge lines in East Anglia). The standard gauge didn’t start in 1825, it was older, being the customary gauge for horse-drawn tramways (used for transporting coal) in the north-east of England. And Russian gauge was broader than standard gauge used by the Germans. And you should have explained the benefits of a narrower gauge (tighter curves, so better in mountains).

The railways in the pre civil war South were reset to the northern gauge as the US armies conquered rail lines. Railroads were a significant part of Grant' s resupply. Unlike the Confederate Army, Grant' s did not have to live off the land so could burn houses and crops along the way. By the end of the war most southern railroads were standard gauge. The rest soon followed.

Thanks. Always wanted to know them but none would a short and concise version of the explanation.

Come to Oz where at one stage you had to change trains often. Peterborogh had a turntabe for all guages. These days main passenger and freight lines are standard guage but some of Qld is still narrow guage, Adelaide passenger rail is broad guage making freight movement impossible. and the little of Tasmania with rail is narrow guage

And then there's Australia, where the 6.5 inch difference in gauges in Victoria (wide gauge) and NSW (standard gauge) had no engineering merits, and to this day results in track on routes between the states either being duplicated, or being dual gauge. This mess arose despite the issue of different gauges already being raised before the lines were built.

Different gauges lead to interesting solutions. For many years, we had the Railship train ferries on a route between Travemünde in Gernany and Hanko in Finland (later Turku). The bogies were changed in the Hanko harbour, like on a assembly line, a remarkably fast system.

Very good explanation! In Romania we have the standard gauge. We have the soviet standard only a few kilometers, to connect with the Republic of Moldova. In fact, on the first stop, the boggies are changed to standard. Narrow gauges is still used in logging industry, but the number of kilometers are decreasing dramatically. Narrow gauges is now used for turism. I invite you to visit them. We had a ingenios sistem in Timișoara. The train gauge and the tram gauge is the same. On the train station, the rails could be connected and the train brought merchandise for the factories which back then was in the middle of the city. The tracks was deteriorating rapidly. The sistem is no longer in use.

This show was excellent. Learning about railroad track gauges was nice.

I heard the guage is based on old wagons that used 2 horses side by side, obviously for the large machinery on tracks now it would be better if the tracks were farther apart

@3:50 in fact it is Germany which had/has narrower gauge - 1435mm. Russia used and still uses Southern US gauge - 1524 mm (60 in or 5ft)

Japan's kinda all over the place. They use standard gauge on all Bullet train lines along with most private companies (Toei, Keisei, Keikyu, Hankyu, Hanshin, Kintetsu). Their national standard is 1067mm on which some trains can still reach a respectable 130kph. There's even a few major lines which use Scotch gauge (1,372mm) in the Keio Line and the Shinjuku Line.

What gauge would you recommend for an area with hills

Nice that you used Clips from around the world and not only from the US or the UK 👍

Most countries don't use different gauges. The standard for most countries was the standard gauge of 4 foot 8 1/2 inches of the British Empire. Even Americans adopted this gauge. The only major nation using a different gauge is Russia who adapted a different gauge to slow down invasions from Europe. They still use a 5 foot gauge. There are poorer nations that used narrow gauge railways because of the lower expense in construction, but major industrialized nations tended to follow the British.

0:33 the way this part is shot, caused me for a moment to think it was just a model.

Excellent training. Cheers!

In 1825 Stephenson used a guage of 4' 8" for the Stockton and Darlington Railway (later the gauge was widened by half an j ch). In 1830 he used a gauge of 4' 8.5" for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. The latter gauge became standard guage. Prior to the standardisation act for the main lines any gauge could be used; the guage had to specified in any new Bill for a public railway brought before Parliament. Broad gauge tracks at a 7' 0.25" gauge could still be laid provided the Bill explained why (typically a direct junction with the GWR lines already running on that gauge. Also allowed were narrow guage public railways. Private railways could be to any guage as they did not need an Act of Parliament to approve them.

Spain: I will use different rails. Portugal: OK, what size? spain: now it's over, i'm going to switch to standard dimensions. Portugal: OH COME ON!!!

India currently uses the widest gauge. However their metro systems use standard gauge for easy transfer of technology

60% - standard gauge 1435mm #Indian Broad gauge 1676mm #Iberian broad gauge 1668mm #Russian broad gauge 1524mm

In switzerland many rack ralways are 1000mm and 800mm so they get better around corners

By the time rail tracks where laid in Spain, France had already invaded it twice in the same century. First in 1802 and then in 1821. 10 years later It was a matter of national security to build with a different gauge. Russia actually did the same because of Napoleon's invasion. It was not just random. Portugal has to suck up to whatever Spain does in many ways otherwise it would be blocked from ground transportation. I guess that fear of the Portuguese from being invaded by Spain it's just a myth.

Lots not covered in this. Brazil uses a mixture of narrow 1000mm and broad 1600mm gauge as well as some standard gauge. Amazingly little know is the mixed gauge running with occasional use of broad gauge power of 1600mm gauge to pull metre gauge trains on third rail track with converter wagons to line up couplings. If you think this is impossible look at the wheelsets at the rail in this clip : ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--Q3qjhWlldo.html It seem so common in Brazil that the poster makes no comment to identify this amazing arrangement. Sometimes have narrow gauge helpers at the tail on eight wheel trucks. Looks like surplus US power re-gauged.

Trevithick and especially the Stephenson's did much to develop modern railways of course but systems using wagons rolling along rails called wagonways had been in use for at least a couple of centuries. The one serving the collieries around Easington in County Durham had over 100 miles of track. The wagons would be horse drawn but the military demand for horses made them expensive. When the first locomotive builders got going they were making machines to replace horses and, as you say, just built to whatever gauge their colliery system used and it so happened that the systems in the north east used a 4'8" gauge or, as they got linked together, could be regauged to that relatively easily and so Stephenson's arbitrary standard gauge was born. The Stephensons later determined that trains ran better if there was a little play between wheel and rail- it was easier to regauge the track than the rolling stock so the extra half inch was added. Russia adopted a wider than standard five foot gauge.

Ireland's guage is said to be a compromise between Brunel and Stephenson. It's unique to Ireland (north and south), and parts of Australia and Brazil. It's used nowhere else in the world.

Well explained. This is an interesting and useful knowledge.

Why is the audio sound like it’s being read by a robot?

The BART system in the San Francisco Bay Area uses a broad gauge. Hearing that it's better for higher speeds in turns, this makes sense now.

Funny enough the Baldwin RS-4-TC has the ability to change gauges if they were taken to other countries. The two that are used at Northwest Railway Museum never left the country at all and are fairly new but the other 35 r so maybe left at some point, I'm not sure. It is interesting that a deisel-eletric engine in the past was made to do that and I don't know of any other engine that was made to do that back in those days.

You are "on the wrong tracks" regarding the Russian gauge and there are many over-simplifications in this piece

Australia could choose whatever width they wanted, because there was an almost ZERO chance of the rail network linking up with another nation

As far as I know, Bahnhof Jenbach in Austria is the only train station that has rails of three different gauges: 760 mm on the Zillertalbahn, 1000 nm on the Achenseebahn, and 1435 mm (normal gauge) on the Inntalbahn.

why did he put a standard gauge CSX locomotive when he said broad guage

I’d go with Brunel’s Broad Gauge

In india,its broad gauge in 99% routes

Germany uses mostly standard gauge with a very few specialist railroads using 1000mm (the HSB in the Harz is the best known and largest)

Trevithick's name was Richard, not Robert...

India uses atleast 3 different gauges, for different regions and purposes.

My do most countries use different railway gauges? Good question, since most countries use the same railway gauge.

Russian railroads were built as the southern American states - 60 inch gauge - 1524mm. Later it is changed to 1520. It is broader than the German gauge.

Me again. Russia has a broad gauge, not narrow gauge as stated at 3.54

Mighty interesting !! THANK YOU....(I am a Railway enthusiast...) :)

I have heard “gauge” more then i ever needed to. Thanks

I was always taught that the reason we use standard gauge is due the drag coefficient. narrow gauge is unstable in high speed turns, but has less drag between the wheels on the tracks. wide gauge has more drag on turns but is more stable for high speeds. Standard gauge is the best & worst of both, so it's better for long runs, tight turns, switching, and all around better overall since it can be calculated and the trains can be adapted for the wear on the tracks and wheels.

India is the largest user of broader 1676mm gauge...

Off top my head the guage is not different its incline. Basically the incline i think would have been a way to strengthen the rail due to manufacturing processes

Says "most" in the title, then "40%" in the description!