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
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