Note 86 — Chapter XVII

The original width of the coal tram-roads in the North virtually determined the British gauge. It was the width of the ordinary road-track—not fixed after any scientific theory, but adopted simply because its use had already been established. George Stephenson introduced it without alteration on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, and the lines subsequently formed in that district were laid down of the same width. Stephenson from the first anticipated the general extension of railways throughout England, and one of the ideas with which he started was the essential importance of preserving such a uniformity as would admit of perfect communication between them. When consulted about the gauge of the Canterbury and Whitstable, and Leicester and Swannington Railways, he said, "Make them of the same width: though they may be a long way apart now, depend upon it they will be joined together some day." All the railways, therefore, laid down by himself and his assistants in the neighborhood of Manchester, extending from thence to London on the south, and to Leeds on the east, were constructed on the Liverpool and Manchester, or narrow gauge. Besides the Great Western Railway, where the gauge adopted was seven feet, the only other line on which a broader gauge than four feet eight and a half inches was adopted was the Eastern Counties, where it was five feet, Mr. Braithwaite, the engineer, being of opinion that an increase of three and a half inches in the width of the line would afford better space for the machinery of the locomotive. But when the northern and eastern extension of the same line was formed, which was to work into the narrow-gauge system of the Midland Railway, Robert Stephenson, its new engineer, strongly recommended the directors of the Eastern Counties Line to alter their gauge accordingly, for the purpose of securing uniformity, and they adopted his recommendation.