Gauges and Wheels

by Michael Frewston

  The wording of the Gauge Act was as follows:

  "WHEREAS it is expedient to define the Gauge on which Railways shall be constructed: Be it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty That after the passing of this Act it shall not be lawful to construct any Railway for the Conveyance of Passengers on any Gauge other than Four Feet Eight Inches and Half an Inch in Great Britain, and Five Feet Three Inches in Ireland: Provided always, that nothing herein-before contained shall be deemed to forbid the Maintenance and Repair of any Railway constructed before the passing of this Act on any Gauge other than those herein-before specified, or to forbid the laying of new Rails on the same Gauge on which such Railway is constructed within the Limits of Deviation authorized by the several Acts under the Authority of which such Railways are severally constructed."

  Brunel of course did not take to that decision easily. He had already demonstrated in various contests, organised by the Gauge Commission itself, that his broad gauge trains were superior in terms of both stability and load carrying capabilities.

  Undaunted, he used the ‘escape’ clause in this act that did not “…forbid the laying of new Rails on the same Gauge on which such Railway is constructed…” to its fullest extent, and he still continued building broad gauge lines for many years after the Act was passed. But he was fighting a battle that he knew he would eventually lose.

  Notwithstanding the demonstrated superiority of Brunel’s broad gauge, the Commission argued, probably quite reasonably, that there were now over four times the route distance (some accounts say even more) already built to 1435 mm gauge, or at least within spitting distance of it, as were built to 2140 mm gauge, and that it would prove to be far too expensive and quite unjustifiable to expect all those railways to convert their tracks and their trains to Brunel’s gauge. Not only that, most of those 1435 mm gauge lines already built had insufficient room (especially in respect of the greater track centreline-to-centreline distance required, as well as in tunnels and between bridge abutments and station platforms) to permit a wider gauge, regardless of any technical superiority it may possess.

  Brunel may have lost the war, but he nonetheless took as much time as possible to convert his Great Western Railway to Standard gauge. Using the ‘escape’ clause in the Act, he didn’t start the conversion until 1866, some twenty years after it was passed; he even OPENED a new broad gauge line in 1877 (the St. Ives branch in the very west of Cornwall). Still, no broad gauge trains ran north of Oxford by 1869, yet his broad gauge trains ran for a remarkable further 23 years, until 1892, often on mixed gauge track, before the final piece of broad gauge track had disappeared for ever.

  It meant the scrapping of huge numbers of locomotives and rolling stock, some of which were the best engineered in the world at the time, but the foresight of the Royal Commission in insisting on a Standard gauge throughout the land proved to be the right one in the end – certainly on economic and practical grounds, and quite possibly on technical grounds as well (as we shall see shortly), notwithstanding Brunel’s arguments to the contrary.

  But Britain was not the only country to undergo a gauge war as its railways developed. The United States of America also had its own gauge war. This time, though, rather than being just a technical, practical and economic consideration, America’s gauge wars went to the very heart of that nation’s emergence, involving as it did the Civil War. Indeed, the course of America’s history may very well have been quite different but for various track gauge decisions made by the nation’s pioneer railway builders. This story will be told in detail in Part 7 of this book where it deals with the USA.

  A similar situation occurred in Australia. As with the USA, competing interests built different gauges in the different states, each with their own agenda as to why the entire country should adopt their gauge. Unlike the USA however, Australia has never resolved that problem, and has only recently started to address it with the construction of transcontinental Standard gauge lines, often alongside, or integrated with, non-Standard gauge track.

  Other countries also had their tussles over which gauge to settle on as its railways developed – Canada, Holland, India and others all had to eventually sort out which gauge would become their standard, and these will be covered in the appropriate Parts.

  What these gauge wars showed however was that the different gauges chosen by the various pioneering railway builders involved much more than simple technical decisions. Instead, they have, in many instances, influenced the very course of world history, and made the world today what it is.

  Are gauge wars then a thing of history, not part of the modern world? Far from it, it seems. It could be argued that in fact a new gauge war is emerging, this time between the European Union (EU) and the Russian Federation – what is known as ‘Area 1520’.

  Both the EU and ‘Area 1520’ are building, or at least funding, lines in each other’s territory – Standard gauge lines in the Baltic states, 1520 mm gauge lines already extending into Eastern Europe and eventually into Western Europe. If the surrounding publicity (some may call it propaganda) is to be believed, each is determined, it would appear, to try and persuade the other to abandon the other’s long-entrenched railway gauge in favour of its own gauge.

  While such wholesale abandonment is very unlikely to happen, where this will end is something that only the future can tell us. But it does show, even in the second decade of the 21st century, that the issue of what railway gauge to use is far from dead. I will go into this in more detail in Parts 2, 3, 4 and 5.

  GAUGES AND THE WORLD AT WAR:

  Quite separate from the Gauge wars in the development of a standard railway gauge is the part played by railway gauges when nations went to war, and as a result quite possibly changed world history, unbelievable as that may seem – and on more than one occasion. Indeed, the reader may ask, how can what seems like a relatively minor technical issue as the gauge of a nation’s railways have such a bearing on how the world exists today?

  Almost ever since there were railways, they have been used in times of warfare to move troops and their supplies to battlefronts and supply points. Where these occurred in an enemy’s territory, the ability to seamlessly run your trains over the enemy’s tracks was an obvious advantage – or was it? The answer to that of course depends on whose side you are on.

  In the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-71, the German military, unlike the French, was well-organised, and, crucially, well-mobilised. The Germans were able to use the French rail system to capture the French territories of Alsace and Loraine, and make them part of Germany – a process that was easily accomplished by the common use of 1435 mm gauge railways between the two countries. It wasn’t until the Treaty of Versailles was enacted that these territories reverted back to France.

  World War I probably saw the most massive development in the use of the railway as a critical element in the ability to wage war. The war started in June 1914, in Sarajevo, but quickly escalated to consume the whole of Europe. Once Germany had decided to enter the fray, it invaded and subsequently used Luxembourg as a troop train hub, connected as it was by rail with, not only Germany, but France and Belgium as well – all countries using Standard gauge. This plan – known as the Schlieffen plan – eventually failed due to some German strategic errors, as well as France’s particularly robust response (known as Plan 17), but it hinged completely on the Germans being able to run their trains seamlessly over the French, Belgian and Luxembourg railway networks. Likewise France’s Plan 17 required the same modus operandi.

  But the British were also making extensive use of their Standard gauge railways in World War I. In 1915, front-line troops were chronically short of shells, this becoming known back in Britain as the shells crisis. A monumental effort was made in manufacturing huge numbers shells, which, organised by eminent railway manager Eric Geddes, were transported by rail to Southampton and then across the Channel on train-carrying ships straight on to Standard gauge French rails, from where they could be transported
to the troops on the front line.

  Not only shells – tanks, other vehicles such as lorries and cars, as well as food and water, were transported by rail on wagons and in coaches across the Channel and thence over French and Belgian tracks. All this of course was facilitated by French and Belgian railways sharing the same 1435 mm gauge tracks as those in Britain.

  But not all aspects of World War I had the advantage, or disadvantage, depending on one’s point of view, of the use of a common rail gauge.

  In 1914, at the start of World War I, Russia was already allied with France against Germany. In August of that year, the Battle of Tannenberg, in what is now Poland, was raging. The Russian army was invading Prussia, with over 150 000 Russian soldiers on the march. These soldiers were to have been supplied with both food and weaponry by means of supply trains sent from Russia.

  But the operation failed. Russian trains running on 1524 mm gauge tracks could not continue beyond the Russian border into Prussia, with its 1435 mm gauge tracks, and the Russian army, on the march and now far into Prussia, was starved of essential supplies. By the same token, and at the same time, Germany was able to run its 1435 mm gauge trains into Prussia, and consequently surround the Russian army at Tannenberg. The Russian army was thus defeated, with thousands of soldiers killed and over 125 000 taken prisoner. The course of World War I (or at least this part of it) was likely changed at this point – and nearly all due to the railway gauge difference between Russia and Prussia, now part of Europe. Any hopes that this war was going to be over in months were now long gone.

  Similar episodes again happened, this time in World War II, but in the reverse direction. In the summer of 1941, Hitler had embarked upon Operation Barbarossa, one of the deadliest battles in history, and part of the German blitzkrieg offensive. The idea was to invade Russia and capture Moscow.

  But while German troops made good progress over land during the dry summer weather, everything became bogged down as the autumn rains turned what in summer had been dry passable roads into seas of deep mud. As autumn turned to winter, the severe cold (down to -40 °C at times), and the even more intractable travel conditions, made further progress all but impossible. That problem perhaps could have been ameliorated IF Hitler had been able to immediately make use of the Russian railways to move soldiers and their supplies. This of course was impossible when German trains could proceed no further than Brest on the Russian border with Poland, where 1435 mm gauge ended and the Russian 1524 mm gauge began.

  Hitler did in fact attempt to address this problem to a large degree. He had already started by re-gauging some Russian lines, as well as two marshalling yards near the Polish border – Malaszevica, on the Brest-Litovsk line and in Przemsyl. He then proceeded to re-gauge as much of the Russian railway system as he could further into Russia. But it was much more of a technical challenge that it might first appear.

  Hitler couldn’t simply add another rail inside the original 1524 mm rails in converting to 1435 mm gauge – the mere 89 mm reduction in gauge width meant there was not enough room to add the extra rail alongside one of the existing rails. The only solution was to remove one of the existing rails, including all its fittings, and re-install it 89 mm further in. That was a major, and time-consuming, undertaking – and was to have far-reaching consequences.

  By early 1941, he had re-gauged the 1524 mm gauge lines to 1435 mm gauge through Lithuania, Latvia (the branch going to Riga) and Estonia, all the way to Leningrad (today called St. Petersburg). Some of these lines had been converted by Russia to 1524 mm gauge just the year previously, in 1940 – now they were being converted back! Hitler was aided by the enthusiastic help and co-operation of the Baltic states’ population – they had had enough of the brutal Russian rule under Stalin, and looked upon Germany as their saviour.

  By the spring of 1942, Hitler had converted many other lines in Russia to Standard gauge, including the important line to Kiev, in the Ukraine.

  It was however the line from Brest to Moscow that was key to Hitler’s plan to capture Moscow, and hence Russia as a whole, in what is known as the Battle of Moscow. Hitler made good progress initially, completing the re-gauging of this line to 1435 mm through Minsk as far as Smolensk, reaching that city in 1942. His plan was to have a Standard gauge line to Moscow within weeks.

  But Smolensk was only around two thirds of the 1000-km distance from Brest to Moscow, leaving over 350 km to go. With German troops already within 30 km of Moscow (and some divisions actually within sight of the city), it was not enough. The severe weather (one of the coldest winters ever recorded, which caused German locomotives to suffer major mechanical failures in the -40 °C cold), combined with various strategic blunders by Hitler, ensured that the unsupported German troops, short of both food and weaponry, were ultimately routed by Russian troops, who had been able to regroup. Moscow was thus saved from German occupation, and the course of Russian history (and possibly subsequent world history) was changed.

  Once again, railway gauge incompatibility, and again between the Eastern European 1435 mm gauge and the Russian 1524 mm gauge, intervened in a European war, no doubt changing its outcome, and certainly preventing Hitler from keeping his troops both supplied and on the move, as he needed to, if he was going to capture Russia. Operation Barbarossa ultimately failed. One can only speculate how the world might be different today if this battle had succeeded.

  [I should stress that this brief summary of Hitler’s program of converting Russian lines to Standard gauge, especially the changing gauge situation in the Baltic states just prior to and during the first three years of World War II, is somewhat of an over-simplification of what was a very complex series of events that happened over this period of time. I do cover this in a bit more detail in Part 4 dealing with ‘Area 1520’, but to go into this aspect much deeper would require a book of its own!]

  I have already mentioned the American Civil War. That too was a war whose outcome was affected by railway gauge incompatibility. I will leave that story to the chapter in Part 7 dealing with the USA.

  GAUGES AND THE RAILWAYS’ QUEST FOR SPEED:

  If we take the Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) as the world’s first public railway, then, by definition, it held the world’s railway speed record when it opened – there was nothing else to beat! The S&DR’s steam engine Locomotion No.1 reached a dizzying 24 km/h – less than half what a good horse could reach.

  But trains developed rapidly, and between 1840 and 1854, the GWR, on Brunel’s 2140 mm broad gauge tracks, was smashing speed records at an inordinate rate – 98 km/h in 1845, 126 km/h in 1850, and 132 km/h in 1864. Even more remarkably, this was all achieved VERY unofficially, using scheduled trains carrying fare-paying passengers (who likely were blissfully unaware that they were travelling faster than anyone else on the planet had travelled before!). Did this mean that Brunel was right all along, and that only his broad gauge trains could reach these sorts of speeds in those early days?

  Up until the late 1800s, perhaps – but the technology in those days was relatively primitive, and the broad gauge meant that these various technological limitations and compromises could be overcome or tolerated more easily than was the case with Standard gauge. But it was not to last.

  The Eastern Railway overcame any supposed speed advantages held by Brunel’s broad gauge in 1890, when one of its Crampton class locomotives, on what is today the East Coast Main Line, achieved 144 km/h on its way to Scotland – faster than anything the GWR had reached at that time. This was nothing to do with gauge – just that Brunel’s locomotives (which were now getting old, as they were destined to shortly disappear during this time when Brunel’s tracks were progressively converted to Standard gauge) were technically falling short of those now being operated by other railways.

  Things stayed at a bit of a plateau for a while, but then the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER), which now incorporated the former Eastern Railway, upped the ante again in its quest to have the fastest trains from London t
o Scotland, when its A3 class locomotive Flying Scotsman reached 180 km/h in 1936. Two years later, another LNER locomotive, the streamlined A4 class Mallard, reached a speed of 203 km/h – a steam engine record that stands to this day.

  That record was achieved on normal Standard gauge tracks (and technologically obsolete ones at that, involving relatively flexible bullhead rail sitting in cast iron chairs). This record likely still stands because steam engine technology – especially that involving large reciprocating pistons and heavy connecting rods – had reached its practical limit.

  The Germans, Italians and the French however were already progressing beyond steam engines, and were embracing both diesel and electric power in the 1930s. An Italian ETR200 electric train reached a speed of 201 km/h in 1937, while German trains had already reached speeds of around 230 km/h by 1931, albeit with a Zeppelin propeller-powered railcar that did not involve wheels being directly driven.

  World War II thwarted any further attempts at setting new railway speed records, but in the early 1950s, the French railway system – the SNCF – took things to a whole new level. It was now setting records approaching the 250 km/h mark with its Alstom CC electric locomotives – nearly 20 km/h greater than the fastest speed achieved until that time.

  But the SNCF didn’t stop there. It broke the 300 km/h barrier on 28th of March, 1955, and then made world history on the following day, when it set a new world speed record of 331 km/h. This was achieved with a somewhat modified BB class electric locomotive pulling three coaches.

  Another plateau appears to have then been reached in the quest for speed records, and that French record was to stand for the next 25 years. But then, at the beginning of the 1980s, the SNCF developed its Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV), running on dedicated high speed lines, and started out on a program of setting a whole series of new world speed records.