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Comment by toolslive | Hacker News Reader

In the 19th century, two competitors set out to build railways in England. Brunel in the south, Stephenson in the north. Stephenson used what's now called the standard gauge because the axon length was already in use for horse chariots and therefor easily available. Brunel however, set out to find the optimal gauge and settled on a wider one (around 2m). He also invented the black box as a side effect to prove his gauge was better and provided more stable rides. When it became time to connect the two railway systems, they settled on Stephenson's preference for political reasons.

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I thought Stephenson gauge was chosen because there were a lot more rail miles and rolling stock using that gauge than Brunel gauge.

In the end, it seems it's good enough. Both high speed trains as well as the heaviest freight trains ever work fine with standard gauge.

From wikipedia: Stephenson's gauge was chosen on the grounds that existing lines of this gauge were eight times longer than those of the rival 7 ft or 2,134 mm (later 7 ft 1⁄4 in or 2,140 mm) gauge adopted principally by the Great Western Railway

> I thought Stephenson gauge was chosen because there were a lot more rail miles and rolling stock using that gauge than Brunel gauge.

That was key reason. The other was that 7ft gauge limits how tight your corners can be versus standard gauge. There are other minor disadvantages, such as that because trains are bigger, tunnels need to be wider.

The 7ft gauge trains were probably a lot more smooth though. And that extra ~3ft would make them feel much more spacious. Luxury was a big prestige element on the Great Western.

None of those reasons are political though, they're all very reasonable technical and logistical reasons.

> He also invented the black box as a side effect to prove his gauge was better and provided more stable rides.

There's an interesting chapter in the memoirs of Charles Babbage (he of the Difference and Analytical Engines) where he describes his experiences with the first railways and how he did some experiments on Brunel's Great Western route and built (one of, or possible the?) first dynamometer cars:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Passages_from_the_Life_of_a_P...

That chapter also contains this priceless bit where after Babbage had only by luck narrowly avoided a head-on collision with Brunel going the other way on the same track, Brunel replies that if Babbage's train had actually been approaching the other way on the same line, "he should have put on all the steam he could command, with a view of driving off the opposite engine by the superior velocity of his own."

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