Originally Posted by
jrl767
the analyst in me is curious, though ... when the railway standards were adopted, was the use of English units of measurement (rather than metric) that common?
The first lines were built to serve collieries in NE England (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockt...ington_Railway) and had a gauge of 4ft 8.5in. This was said to have been the distance between the wheels of Roman chariots, which had left grooves in the Roman roads and probably determined the spacing for subsequent users. That gauge was spread around the world by British railway builders, though Brunel was a firm believer in the 7 foot gauge which made derailments less likely. Fortunately the narrow gauges used by many mine railways were limited to where they were needed. There are, of course, other gauges and that made for interesting international connections.