How did the width of the railway track come from?

1. Rails appeared before the train appeared. At that time, the railway track was mainly used in coal mines, and people used carriages to transport coal along the railway track. At that time, the width of the railway track was exactly 1435 mm, and the width of this distance was exactly the width of the buttocks of two war horses. After historical development, the width of the current train track has been determined. This phenomenon is called "path dependence" in technical terms, which is similar to inertia in physics.

2. Standard gauge refers to the standard gauge 1435 mm (equal to 4 feet and 8.5 inches in English) formulated by the International Railway Association in 1937. The gauge wider than the standard gauge is called wide gauge and the narrow gauge is called narrow gauge. About 60% of the railways in the world have standard gauge.

3. The standard gauge was put forward by Britain, which was the first to use railways. Robert Stephenson, a British engineer who designed and built the stoughton and Darlington railways, proposed a gauge of 4 feet 8.5 inches, and successfully persuaded the train manufacturers to produce locomotives and vehicles with a gauge of 4 feet 8.5 inches (i.e.1.435mm). Because Stephenson's successful railway design is the object of imitation, this gauge has also become popular. In 1845, the Royal Commissioner suggested using 4 feet 8.5 inches as the standard gauge.

4. 1846, the British parliament passed a bill requiring all railways to use standard gauge in the future. Except for the Great Western Railway in Britain, which adopts wide gauge, all the major railways in Britain adopt standard gauge. The Great Western Railway was also changed into a standard track at 1892.

5. On traditional railways, most countries in the world use standard gauge, mainly Western Europe, North America, North Africa and China. From the development process of determining the standard width of railway track, we can see that the initial choice of things determines the future development direction, and the force of inertia will make this choice constantly strengthen itself and be difficult to change.