Between 1863 and 1869, three American railway companies completed a project to connect the
existing east coast railway network with railroads on the west coast. The 1,912 miles of track,
including nineteen tunnels through granite mountains that were needed to complete the
Transcontinental Railroad, was an amazing engineering feat for a country that already
had more miles of railway than the rest.. of the world.. combined. And yet the completion of the
Transcontinental Railroad was not the only amazing feat of American railroad engineering in history,
because in 1886 railways in the south managed to convert the gauge on an estimated 11,500
miles of railway track in a period of just 36 hours. It is a little-known piece of American
railroad history that deserves to be remembered. The development of rail transport, that eventually
evolved into modern railways, started with the carts used to move ore in mineral extraction
developed largely in the 16th century in Europe. Early tracks used wooden rails but as technology
developed cast-iron and then rock iron rails replaced the wooden rails. Rails called plate
ways, which used l-shaped rails with the upper side of the L holding the wheels in
place developed in the 18th century, but as the weight of the railway carts increased the
plate weighs proved too fragile. Edge rails, with a flat rail and a flanged railway wheel,
became the norm in the early part of the 19th century as railways became more common,
and Scottish inventor James Watts improvement of a steam engine allowed for the successful
development of steam locomotives to pull railway cars. But the development of edge rails and steam
locomotives pressed another issue, that of railway gauge. Track gauge represents the spacing of the
rails on a railway track and is measured between the interfaces of the load bearing rails. Plate
ways are relatively forgiving of car axle widths, although gauge is still meaningful.
Edge rails require a fairly precise fit of the flanged wheel to the track and gauge becomes more
important, as cars and locomotives built for one gauge will not fit on tracks for another gauge.
Track gauge is an important factor, wider gauges are more stable and generally allow heavier loads
but are more expensive requiring heavier cars and locomotives and a larger right-of-way. Narrower
gauges are less stable but carry smaller cars and use a smaller right-of-way. In Great Britain that
led to a conflict in the first half of the 19th century between the 7 foot or broad-gauge of the
Great Western Railway and the 4 foot 8 and 1/2 inch standard gauges used by the Liverpool in
Manchester and London and Birmingham railways. The so-called “Gauge Wars” were an economic
competition over control of lines, but the cost of transferring goods at the point where incompatible
lines met, called the break of gauge, finally forced Parliament to act. “The regulating the
gauge of Railways Act” of 1846 stipulated that new lines would be made on the standard gauge,
unless they were directly connected to the current broad gauge network. In many ways the
standard gauge is a reasonable compromise, in fact research on ancient Roman roads suggests
they used a very similar axle width on their wagons and chariots. While the demands of wagons
and trains are somewhat different, they're both gauged on the size of human beings, a wagon with
an axle width of 4 foot eight and a half inches comfortably fits two passengers side-by-side.
A railway car built for a four foot eight and a half inch gauge, comfortably fits two passengers
on either side separated by a central aisle. The United States started adopting rail in the 18th
century and by the mid 1820s had established common carriers like the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad. While there was relatively more rail development in the more industrialized north,
railroads were also developed in the south, where the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company,
became the first railroad to operate a locomotive to be built entirely within the United States for
railway service. While railways in the United States started out using a number of different
gauges, in general railways in the north tended to use the standard gauge, whereas railways in the
south developed on a 5-foot, or broader rail, that better fit cars that were built to carry cotton
bales. At first this wasn't a problem as there was not a lot of rail commerce between the north and
south, although the difference did play a role in delaying funding for the Transcontinental
Railroad, as in 1860, representatives from the south were advocating for a more southerly
route. The coming of the Civil War meant that the southern representatives were no longer a
concern and Congress passed the Pacific Railroad act in 1862 that not only guaranteed the central
route for the Transcontinental Railroad, but stipulated that the entire route would be built
on the standard gauge. The Union was able to leverage the large rail network during the war,
and the Union blockade contributed to a decline in southern rail, as they could not get new equipment
and spare parts, but the difference in gauges did make it more difficult for the Union to move
troops by rail in the south. After the war during the period of reconstruction, trade between the
north and south grew substantially. The southern railroad system was largely repaired and expanded,
but the gauge difference started to become more of an obstacle. At first cars had to be laboriously
unloaded and reloaded at the point of break of gauge, then an ingenious device called the
Ramsey Car Apparatus was used to change the trucks under a car without having to reload the cargo,
still the process was expensive and took time. In 1884 and 1885 two lines that operated in both the
north and south, the Illinois Central and the Mobile in Ohio, switched to a standard gauge,
this allowed them to be more efficient and put pressure on other Southern Railways to compete.
In February of 1886, operating officers of the south's railroads met in Atlanta and agreed to
change the southern gauge. Curiously they did not adopt the standard four foot 8 and 1/2 inch gauge,
but the slightly broader four foot nine inch gauge used by the Pennsylvania Railroad, with which many
of the southern lines connected. While trains from the two gauges were largely compatible,
it was short-sighted of the committee not to move to the four foot eight and a half
inch gauge that as the track gauge of the Transcontinental Railroad, was clearly the
gauge of the future. Still the Commission went with the four foot nine inch Pennsylvania gauge.
Understand the sheer magnitude of this process, not only did they have to convert some 11,500
miles of rail, but also all the locomotives and rolling stock. And as trains would not be able to
operate during the switch it was important that the switch over occur as quickly as possible,
the date for the switch was set between Monday May 31st and Tuesday June 1st. That gave just four
months to prepare for the massive undertaking, only one rail had to be moved so rails all along
the way were marked for the new gauge using a three inch length of pipe, as many as two
and three of the spikes on the inside of the rail were removed, moved to the new gauge and
partially hammered, ready for when the rail was to be moved. Where possible, axles on the rolling
stock were modified ahead of time, some engines were mounted with plate shaped wheels that turned
out it fit the old gauge, on the day of the switch the wheel would be reversed and fit the new gauge.
Some axles were laid for the new gauge and had a ring added to hold the wheel at the old gauge,
during the switch the ring was removed and the wheel moved to the new gauge. Lays were positioned
along the lines in order to convert rolling stock that could not be modified ahead of time, in some
cases new tools were invented such as a circular pipe that could be hooked into a city gas works,
creating a torch to modify axles. As the date approached lines that could be easily cleared of
traffic were converted. When the day came and the lines were cleared crews started working at 3:30
am, the crews have pulled the spikes, move the rails to the mark spot and hammered new spikes.
Some lines gave crews a mileage quota, others had a crew in a direction and told them to stop when
they ran into a crew working the other direction, some lines gave bonuses for extra miles converted,
although that meant that some of the work was sloppily done. Trains were prepared with the
new gauge carrying an extra work crew, the train serves as a test of the line and if it caught up
with a crew that was behind schedule, the extra crew could jump out and assist, to get back on
schedule. The work was done with amazing speed, in a period of just 36 hours virtually the entirety
of the southern railway lines, an estimated 11,500 miles worth, as well as their locomotives and cars,
had been converted. The work was done so economically and so quietly the Journal of
the Association of Engineer Societies noted “that the public hardly realized it was in progress”
The ability to make such a massive change in such a short period of time with so little disruption
is a testament to the value of the planning. One of the railways had managed to shut down
a 200 mile length of track early, and so they had trained all their crews on the process before the
critical day came. Presetting crews and support equipment and testing processes was critical in
short planning guaranteed success. The cost of the switch was about $100 per mile of track,
which is roughly the equivalent of $2,100 in today's dollars, and that was easily made up
with the increased efficiency. The gauge change is part of the Golden Age of American Rail and came
during a dynamic period in American history when railroads were helping to facilitate a massive
economic shift. In 1880 nearly half of the U.S. workforce worked in agriculture, while only one in
seven worked in manufacturing. By 1920 agriculture and manufacturing represented almost equal shares
of the workforce. But the immediate impact of this which was somewhat surprising, the increased
standardization should have resulted in lower shipping costs because of greater efficiency. By
the 2016 analysis of route level traffic data determined that while the switch moved some
commerce from river boats to railways, overall freight traffic did not increase. The reason,
anti-competitive practices on the part of the railroad cartels kept them from passing on the
savings terms of lower shipping costs, the railway owners just pocketed the savings. The analysis
suggests that if they passed on just fifty percent of the savings in terms of lower shipping costs,
it would cause an overall 10 percent increase in overall trade. Ironically it was the same
level of cooperation that an economic incentive that allowed the switch to be made so quickly
and efficiently that prevented the full realization of the value of the switch.
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