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A broad-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge (the distance between the rails) broader than the used by standard-gauge railways.
Broad gauge of , more known as Russian gauge, is the dominant track gauge in former Soviet Union countries (CIS states, Baltic states, Georgia, Ukraine) and Mongolia. Broad gauge of , commonly known as five foot gauge, is mainly used in Finland. Broad gauge of , commonly known as Irish gauge, is the dominant track gauge in Ireland, the state of Victoria and Adelaide in South Australia and passenger trains of Brazil.
Broad gauge of , commonly known as Iberian gauge, is the dominant track gauge in Spain and Portugal.
Broad gauge of , commonly known as Indian gauge, is the dominant track gauge in Indian Railways, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Argentina, Chile, and on BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) in the San Francisco Bay Area. This is the widest gauge in common use anywhere in the world. It is possible for trains on both Iberian gauge and Indian gauge to travel on each other's tracks with no modifications in the vast majority of cases.
The Great Western Railway was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1838 with a gauge of , and retained this gauge until 1892. Some harbours also used railways of this gauge for construction and maintenance. These included Portland Harbour and Holyhead Breakwater, which used a locomotive for working sidings. As it was not connected to the national network, this broad-gauge operation continued until the locomotive wore out in 1913. Connection The gauge initially proposed by Brunel was exactly but this was soon increased by to to accommodate clearance problems identified during early testing. George Stephenson was to add an extra half inch to his original gauge for the same reason.
While the parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was initially prepared to authorise lines built to the broad gauge of , it was eventually rejected by the Gauge Commission in favour of all new railways in England, Wales and Scotland being built to standard gauge of , this being the gauge with the greatest mileage. Railways which had already received their enabling Act would continue at the 7 ft gauge. Ireland, using the same criteria, was allocated a different standard gauge, the Irish gauge, of which is also used in the Australian states of South Australia and Victoria. Broad-gauge lines in Britain were gradually converted to dual gauge or standard gauge from 1864 and finally the last of Brunel's broad gauge was converted over a weekend in 1892.
In 1839, the Netherlands started its railway system with two broad-gauge railways. The chosen gauge of was applied between 1839 and 1866 by the Hollandsche IJzeren Spoorweg-Maatschappij (HSM) for its Amsterdam–The Hague–Rotterdam line and between 1842 and 1855, firstly by the Dutch state, but soon by the Nederlandsche Rhijnspoorweg-Maatschappij (NRS), for its Amsterdam–Utrecht–Arnhem line. But the neighbouring countries Prussia and Belgium already used standard gauge, so the two companies had to regauge their first lines. In 1855, NRS regauged its line and shortly afterwards connected to the Prussian railways. The HSM followed in 1866. There are replicas of one broad-gauge 2-2-2 locomotive ( De Arend) and three carriages in the Nederlands Spoorwegmuseum (Dutch Railway Museum) in Utrecht. These replicas were built for the 100th anniversary of the Dutch Railways in 1938–39.
The erstwhile Great Indian Peninsula Railway introduced a broad gauge of for the first passenger railway line in India, between Bori Bunder and Thane. This was later adopted as the standard throughout the country, as it was thought to be safer in areas prone to cyclones and flooding.Indian Railways: Some Fascinating Facts, "Train Atlas", Train Atlas, Indian Railways, 2003 The gauge is now commonly referred to as Indian gauge. While some initial freight railway lines in India were built using standard gauge, most of the standard and narrow gauge railways have since been dismantled and relaid in broad gauge.
Ireland and some states in Australia and Brazil have a gauge of but Luas, the Dublin light rail system, is built to standard gauge. Russia and the other former Soviet Republics use a (originally ) gauge while Finland continues to use the gauge inherited from the Russian Empire (the two standards are close enough to allow full interoperability between Finland and Russia). Portugal and the Spanish Renfe system use a gauge of called Ancho Ibérico in Spanish or Bitola Ibérica in Portuguese (see Iberian gauge); though there are plans to convert to standard gauge. Spanien: Bahn bis 2020 auf Normalspur
In Toronto, Canada, the gauge for TTC subways and streetcars was chosen in 1861. Toronto adopted a unique Toronto gauge of , an "overgauge" originally stated to "allow horse-drawn wagons to use the rails" on the horse-drawn streetcar lines of the day but with the practical effect of precluding the use of standard-gauge equipment in the street. The Toronto Transit Commission still operates the Toronto streetcar system and three heavy-rail Toronto subway lines using this unique gauge. The light metro Scarborough RT and two light rail lines under construction (Eglinton Crosstown line and Finch West) use standard gauge.
In 1851, the broad gauge was officially adopted as the standard gauge for the Province of Canada, becoming known as the Provincial gauge and government subsidies were unavailable for railways that chose other gauges. This caused problems in interchanging freight cars with northern United States railroads, most of which were built to standard gauge or a gauge similar to it. In the 1870s (mainly between 1872 and 1874), Canadian broad-gauge lines were Gauge conversion to standard gauge to facilitate interchange and the exchange of rolling stock with American railroads. Today, almost all Canadian railways are standard-gauge.
In the early days of rail transport in the US, railways tended to be built out from coastal cities into the hinterland, and systems did not initially connect. Each builder was free to choose its own gauge, although the availability of British-built locomotives encouraged some railways to be built to standard gauge. As a general rule, southern railways were built to one or another broad gauge, mostly , while northern railroads that were not standard gauge tended to be narrow gauge. Most of the original track in Ohio was built in , and special "compromise cars" were able to run on both this track and standard-gauge track. In 1848, Ohio passed a law stating "The width of the track or gauge of all roads under this act, shall be four feet ten inches between the rails." When American railroads' track extended to the point that they began to interconnect, it became clear that a single nationwide gauge was desirable.
Six-foot-gauge railroads () had developed a large regional following in New York State in the first part of the 19th century, due to the influence of the New York and Erie, one of the early pioneering railroads in America, chartered in 1832, with its first section opening in 1841. The builders and promoters decided that a six-foot track gauge would be needed for locomotives to be larger and more powerful than were in general use at the time, for pulling very large trains. Also the six-foot gauge provided greater stability, and the New York and Erie would operate passenger cars up to wide. Building westward from the Hudson River, it eventually reached Lake Erie, establishing a mainline longer than providing a shortcut to the American Midwest region from the New York City vicinity, and helping spawn a regional network of six-foot-gauge railroads almost exclusively within New York State.
Many early New York railways were Erie railroad-built branch lines, while others were independent railroads that wanted to partner and interchange with the Erie. These included the Walkill Valley, the Albany and Susquehanna (later part of the Delaware and Hudson); the Elmira, Jefferson & Canandaigua (later the Northern Central, becoming part of the Pennsylvania Railroad); the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western mainline (which also had a significant amount of trackage in Pennsylvania); predecessor lines of the New York and Oswego Midland (later the New York, Ontario, and Western); and the Canandaigua and Niagara Falls (later becoming part of the New York Central railroad's Peanut Route along the shoreline of Lake Ontario). However, by the late 1870s, the trend was inevitable, and conversion to standard gauge began, some lines first becoming "dual-gauged" with the addition of a third running rail. Between 1876 and 1880, most of the remaining six-foot–gauge trackage was converted. The Day They Changed the Gauge on the D.L.& W. by Richard Palmer
In 1886, the railways in the Southern United States agreed to coordinate changing gauge on all their tracks. After considerable debate and planning, most of the southern rail network was converted from gauge to gauge, nearly the standard of the Pennsylvania Railroad, over two days beginning on 31 May 1886. Over a period of 36 hours, tens of thousands of workers pulled the spikes from the west rail of all the broad-gauge lines in the South, moved them east and spiked them back in place. The new gauge was close enough that standard-gauge equipment could run on it without difficulty. By June 1886, all major railroads in North America were using approximately the same gauge. The final conversion to true standard gauge took place gradually as track was maintained.
Some North American tram (streetcar) lines intentionally deviated from standard gauge. This may have been to make the tram companies less tempting targets for takeovers by the steam railways (or competing tram companies), which would be unable to run their trains over the tram tracks.
Pennsylvania trolley gauge of , is still used on the streetcars in New Orleans, and the Pittsburgh Light Rail system. This gauge was also used for the now defunct Pittsburgh Railways, West Penn Railways, and trams in Cincinnati. Similar gauge is used in Philadelphia on SEPTA routes, 15, the Media–Sharon Hill Line, the Subway–Surface Trolleys and the Market–Frankford Line.
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system in the San Francisco Bay Area was opened in 1972 with gauge. The system has been extended multiple times since then, using new railcars custom built with this non-standard gauge.
The use of a non-standard gauge precludes interoperability of rolling stock on railway networks. On the British Great Western Railway the gauge was supposed to allow high speed, but the company had difficulty with locomotive design in the early years, losing much of the advantage, and rapid advances in railway track and suspension technology allowed standard-gauge speeds to approach broad-gauge speeds within a decade or two. On the and gauges, the extra width allowed bigger inside cylinders and greater power, a problem solvable by using outside cylinders and higher steam pressure on standard gauge. In the end, the most powerful engines on standard gauge in North America and Scandinavia far exceeded the power of any early broad-gauge locomotive, but then met limits set by other factors such as the capacity of manual stoking, the axle (and total) locomotive weight that would trigger upgrades to the rails and bridges, the maximum wheelbase and/or boiler length compatible with an individual route's curves.
In the 1930s German engineering studies focused on a Breitspurbahn system of railways of three-meter gauge to serve Hitler's future German Empire.
South Asia primarily uses the broad gauge for its passenger rail services and the fastest broad-gauge train presently in the region is the Indian Railways' Vande Bharat Express (a.k.a. Train 18). During one of the trial runs, the Vande Bharat Express achieved a peak speed of . The sustained speeds of this train is considerably lower, with a peak operational speed of 160 km/h and an average speed of 95 km/h, due to track limitations. Indian Railways has plans to introduce a higher speed Vande Bharat sleeper train that is capable of 200 km/h, but the project has encountered delays stemming from bids for rolling-stocks with poor local sourcing. A number of semi-high-speed railway projects using broad-gauge tracks are being planned or built in the region, with sustained speeds of 200 km/h with future-proofing for 250 km/h. India's current high-speed railway project is being built on the standard gauge due to limitations imposed by the Japanese consortium funding the project, however the feasibility reports by both the French and German consultants preferred a broad-gauge high-speed railway. These European reports stated that the additional costs of train procurement, due to the essential modifications of the rolling-stock for the broad gauge, from European rolling-stock manufacturers such as Alstom or Siemens would be softened through a large minimum order size of at least thirty train sets. A considerable debate has continued about the suitability of the high-speed rail on standard gauge for the Indian travel demands and the possible exclusion of the existing rail network in India. The recent discussions around the K-rail has highlighted the limitations of high-speed rail on broad gauge. Since most of the global high-speed rail infrastructure is built using the standard gauge, the cost benefits of using off-the-shelf rolling-stocks with minimal customizations and the availability of extensive, well proven technical know-how, are significant factors in favor of the high-speed rail on the standard gauge over the broad gauge, for cost sensitive rail markets in South Asia, especially in India.
Russian gauge or CIS gauge is the second most widely used gauge in the world, and spans the whole of the former Soviet Union/CIS bloc including the Baltic states and Mongolia. Finland uses . The difference is clearly lower than the tolerance margin, so through running is feasible. Care must be taken when servicing international trains because the wear profile of the wheels differs from that of trains that run on domestic tracks only.
When the Finnish rail network was founded in 1862, Finland was the Grand Duchy of Finland, an autonomous state ruled by the Imperial Russia. The first border crossing railway to Russia was opened in 1870, while the first to Sweden was not until 1919, so railways were built to the broad Russian track gauge of . In Russia, this gauge was re-standardized to during the 1960s. Finland retained the original gauge with no re-standardisation.
and are commonly known as Pennsylvania trolley gauge because it was originally used by railroad lines in the state of Pennsylvania. Unlike other broad gauges, it remains in use in a number of urban rail transit systems.
The Irish gauge of is used in Ireland, Brazil and the Australian states of Victoria and South Australia. Continuous standard-gauge tracks between Australia's mainland capital cities were implemented with the conversion of the last broad-gauge link, between Adelaide and Melbourne, in 1995.
Later this gauge was adopted as a standard for many British colonies such as Province of Canada and British India.
In 1851, the broad gauge was officially adopted as the standard gauge for the Province of Canada, becoming known as the Provincial gauge, and government subsidies were unavailable for railways that chose other gauges. In the 1870s, mainly between 1872 and 1874, Canadian broad-gauge lines were Gauge conversion to standard gauge to facilitate interchange and the exchange of rolling stock with American railways. Today, all Canadian railways are standard-gauge.
In US, this gauge was adopted for many lines, but soon fell out in favour of standard gauge. Today, only California's Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) uses this gauge.
In British India, some standard gauge freight railways were built in initial period, though they were dismantled later. Later, in the 1850s, the gauge of was adopted as standard for the nationwide network. Attempts to economize on the cost of construction led to the adoption of gauge and then and for many secondary and branch lines. In the later part of the 20th century, due to interchangeability and maintenance issue, the railways in each of the countries in the Indian Subcontinent began to convert all metre-gauge and narrow-gauge lines to this gauge. Today, the nationwide rail network in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal is entirely on this gauge, whereas India, under Project Unigauge, and Bangladesh are still undergoing gauge conversion.
This gauge is the widest gauge in regular passenger use in the world.
Some industrial uses require still broader gauges, such as:
These applications might use double track of the country's usual gauge to provide the necessary stability and axle load. These applications may also use much heavier than normal rails, the heaviest rails for trains being about . Vehicles on these gauges generally operate at very low speeds.
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