History
Historically, the choice of gauge was partly arbitrary and partly a response to local conditions. Narrow-gauge railways are cheaper to build and can negotiate sharper curves but broad-gauge railways give greater stability and permit higher speeds.
Sometimes railway companies chose their own gauge, such as the Great Western Railway choosing 7 ft ¼in (2,140mm).
Other times, statutes required railways to use a particular gauge, such as the Thomasville, Tallahassee and Gulf Railroad having to use standard gauge.
Read more about this topic: Track Gauge
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
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—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)
“History is the present. That’s why every generation writes it anew. But what most people think of as history is its end product, myth.”
—E.L. (Edgar Lawrence)