Railway Gauges did NOT Evolve from a Roman Chariot.

Conduit bridge on the Bristol and  North Somerset abandoned Railway and   there's something below us right now that's  really rare for this country come and take a look there are two things that  have troubled me about railway   gauges over the years but I've never  really taken the time to understand them we know that today's modern Railway  gauges did not evolve from a Roman Chariot   and subsequent Horse's rear I'll clear  that up shortly if you missed a prior   video so why exactly do we have a 4FT 8.5  inch Railway gauge in this country the UK and number two it said that the wider the  gauge or the greater the speed and efficiency   and stability so why did brunell's 7ft broad  gauge fail welcome to the short history of   the Railway gauge and of course here we are  quite the rare thing for this country to find   some in situ track in a hedge that wasn't  pulled up and reused in the 50s 60s and70s so when we talk about the gauge of a railway  we're talking about the inside the top of   the rail heads to each other not talking  about the middle the outside the sleepers   and they shouldn't be confused with the loading  gauge hold different subject we'll come to that later so Railways here in the UK have what we  call a standard gauge 48 1/2 inch or 1,435 mm   now they didn't start out like that despite  the vast majority or a good percentage of   the world's gauges being exactly that to find  out what happened let's step back 500 years or so when you start researching early Railways  there is a rabbit hole and a half and I have   no intention of going down that to answer my two  questions suffice to say there is much evidence   that discusses cart ruts from Greece to Roman  mines they're all imply early Railways but we   are talking Railways not ruts so let's keep  on the rails and for that we need to head to Cumbria so my budget doesn't quite stretch  to uh Cumbria for this video and perhaps more   importantly my apathy to travel there late cold  December is fairly High however instead we've   now traveled a bit further to the uh East on  the didcot Newbury in Southampton Railway to   show you a few different types of rails that  may or may not be hidden in the Hedge and of   course go on a really enjoyable Railway  walk which I haven't done for quite some time Cumbria 1560s and the company of  the mines Royale utilizing German and   Austrian miners introduced a wagon way now  it probably wasn't the first but it's one   of the first documented in in fact Agri  Cola documented similar wagon ways in   his Works der Metallica the system used wooden  planks and rails with wooden Wheels no flange   in any way the rails were pinned to each  other so as not to widen sounds a bit like chaos so these rails for mines popped  up all over Europe so was there a need   for them to conform to one another for  them to be monitored in some way well   of course not they were serving their  own purpose within their own minds job done by the 1750s and 60s iron  production was increasing hugely   and the need to increase efficiency and the  way things were moved and transported was   Paramount plate ways were the next  big thing emerging in the late 1700   s this system would allow unflanged  Wheels to run on L-shaped metal plate ways now we're almost stepping back into  the cart rut territory here so let's step   forward and introduce perhaps one of  the most important characters of the day now I'm walking this abandoned Railway I did  promise you I'll be a to show you some bits of   infrastructure and maybe some old rails relevant  to this line nothing is yet but however it has   given us a spectacular view ahead almost like a  hallway carve straight ahead of me as far as the   eye can see a tiny Speck of light in the distance  really beautiful really relaxing let's get back   on the story let's head to the north of England  more specifically the northeast of England this   area in particular is hugely important for the  development and the technology behind these Earth   rails and perhaps even more importantly than that  it's a playground for the likes of Stevenson to   build on this technology and he did just that  Killingworth Tramway was one such example and   was where Stevenson's Edge rail design was now  being used in favor of the old plate way the edge   rail being this the modern rail relied on flange  Wheels now those original plate WS were 5T wide   a nice round measurement the plates themselves  were around 4 in wide so when designing his edge   rails 4ft 8 inches seemed a perfectly good measure  to carry on using those wagons with a slight   modification and thus we have the 4ft 8 inch gauge  hang on a second so where did the 4' 8 1/2 come from well according to the map there's a uh lot  of water either side here so I think I head down   this little pathway I may or may not find an  old culvert and some architecture of some kind   now Stevenson at this point was soon contracted to  build two new Railways the uh the famous Liverpool   and Manchester and they're not so famous Bolton  and Leigh both of these rails and Gauge were   specified at 4ft 8 not 8 and half right there is  no culvert here but there is something relevant to   the video have a look at this this is used as the  upright stantion of the fencing all the way along   this route and I feel like this is original broad  gauge maybe when they ripped it up all over the   network eventually or this is what they did with  it they used it as uh various points of fencing   but Stevenson wasn't completely happy as the  stock on the curve appeared to bind somewhat he   increased the distance on the gauge by half of an  inch which solved this seemingly with no stability   issues at a point during the gauge Wars period  Stevenson was asked why the 4' 8 in his reply   almost certainly in itself quashes the myth of  the Roman gauge being adopted if I had only been   called upon to do so it would be difficult  to give good reason for the adoption of the   odd measure 4FT 8 1/2 in the gauge really was an  evolution of his own not one of over 2,000 years   old so gages did evolve All Around the World in  their own right their own Evolution and certainly   exports from Britain in those very early days and  mid 1800s well that did lead to the 4' 8 and 1/2   in being quite significant around the globe but  a lot of those other gauges did remain and they   remained even within their own country and own  variations just take a look at Australia quite the thing not only that but even within Britain  Scottish Railway engineer misread some of the   early documents on the Stockton and Darlington  and assumed the 4 ft 8 was from the middle of   the head of the rail subsequently for a Time his  gauge was in fact 4' 6 in and of course here in   the south of England we have Isambard Kingdom  Brunell leading the charge on his Great Western   Railway linking the uh the London to Bristol  now he truly believed in efficiency and here   we have another opportunity to try and find  an old culvert and some infrastructure as a   path goes down the side of this quite a big  embankment here on the didcot Newbury and   Southampton Rrailway now perhaps because he  didn't have the early influence of the mines   from the Northwest maybe he thought outside  of that world he chose the 7ft gauge over 2fT   wider than Stevenson's now adopted gauge 7ft or  just over would give greater speed stability and   efficiency so why ever didn't that last once  again no culvert, bit frustrating I thought   we'd see something there but again we've got  some more Rail and we've got got beautiful   old fence that lined the railway here I love  that the old wires that link them the pioneers   of the time all busy building and insisting that  their technology was the best had little idea of   the overall picture it seemed they didn't really  foresee at this early stage of Need for joined   up thinking and why would they brunell's goal  was the states for his steam boats he connected   London to Bristol possibly for that reason but as  time went on well Railways cropped up everywhere   they linked every Community imaginable if you  didn't have a railway in your village we were   extremely unlucky and of course what that meant  is Railways became closer to one another and the   gauges well of course they wouldn't mix together  so we had to have transfer stations like didcot   and chard where the lines met and of course you'd  have to disembark or you'd have to move Freight one last ditch attempt to show you a culvert on  this uh this rail we and uh I feel like there one   just down here getting there isn't quite so easy  not because of the embankment and such but more   the water at the bottom but I think just down  there is what I've wanted to show you quite a way um found it that's to leave me my  other camera behind cuz it got too   sketchy but found the culvert quite  significant as well this is going to   be something else let going to take a  quick look before we uh get back on the story structurally seen a lot better days all  this original outside has been Re-concreted uh   but four or five foot or whatever it's back  to its original brick lined don't think it's   going anywhere um but it does give us a bit of  context on um what a culvert under this huge   embankment looks like just got a clamber back  up the top without falling back down again in   steps the Royal commission for Railway gauges in  1845 and the result is the regulating of Railway   gauges act 1846 now owing to the fact that  Stevenson's gauge had almost over eight times   more track laid while that decision was clear the  4' 8 1/2 in would stick by moving forward we mean   that there was no expectation that brunell and  others had to rip up their track overnight but   Brunell did so anyway and within 20 or so years  they started then converting every single line   to standard gauge now when they did that they did  that in style Oxford to tame line which is quite   some distance Well that took just a few days to  convert the entire line it said that the cost of   change from broad to standard gauge was around  about £800,000 at the time that's something like   108 billion in today's money it's quite some  significant outlay and at the uh at the time   1891 was reported by the times that it had been  a failure uh economically commercially whichever   way you want to read it into it which seems a bit  strange on the face of it because perhaps had that   gauge been more prolific in its early days well  maybe that would have been adopted everywhere and   the world would look like a very different place  but for the meantime we will probably never know   it's a w if of the age old infrastructure Tales if  you've enjoyed these Tales well please feel free   to join us every week and click on the Subscribe  button below for more interesting things that   just fall into my head and come out in the form  of a video uh thanks for watching see you next time

Channel: Paul Whitewick

Views: 299,853

Keywords: Roman, Railways, Gauge, gauge history, railway history, Paul Whitewick, The Whitewicks, Stephenson, George Stephenson, broad gauge, standard gauge, narrow gauge

Id: zrq2_koM1zg

Length: 14min 17sec (857 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 01 2024