Rail gauge in Australia

Common card · No. 421312

Three mainline rail gauges in Australia were initiated in the very early years of railway development and remain in operation today. The diversity of track gauges – the distance between the inner rail edges – arose at a time when the respective colonies were building lines mainly to transport agricultural produce or minerals to ports. The colonies competed fiercely over trade with the United Kingdom and were quite isolationist in their attitude to each other. During the 1850s, the local unavailability of anyone with knowledge of rail transport, including the relative advantages and disadvantages of particular gauges and the best track design, made decisions about the choice of gauge very difficult. Additionally, a change of mind by the colony of New South Wales as to the gauge of its first railway immediately conflicted with the projects already under way in South Australia and Victoria. The first of innumerable attempts to unify the gauges, often by engineers, occurred in 1857. However...

Read on Wikipedia · Image user:ArnoldReinhold OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL