5 ft and 1520 mm gauge railways

With about 225,000 km (140,000 mi) of track, 1,520 mm is the second-most common gauge in the world, after 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge.

History

Great Britain, 1748

In 1748, the Wylam waggonway was built to a 5 ft (1,524 mm) gauge for the shipment of coal from Wylam to Lemington down the River Tyne.

In 1839, the Eastern Counties Railway was constructed. In 1840, the Northern and Eastern Railway was built. In 1844, both lines were converted to 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge. In 1903, the East Hill Cliff Railway, a funicular, was opened.

United States, 1827

In 1827, Horatio Allen, the chief engineer of the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company, prescribed the usage of 5 ft (1,524 mm) gauge. Many other railroads in the Southern United States adopted this gauge. The presence of several distinct gauges was a major disadvantage to the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. In 1886, when around 11,500 miles (18,500 km) of 5 ft gauge track existed in the United States, almost all of the railroads using that gauge were converted to 4 ft 9 in (1,448 mm), the gauge then used by the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Russian Empire, 1842

In 1837, the first railway built in Russia was a 6 ft (1,829 mm) gauge, 17 km long experimental line connecting Saint Petersburg with Tsarskoye Selo and Pavlovsk. The choice of gauge was influenced by Brunel's Great Western Railway which used 7 ft (2,134 mm). The Tsarskoye Selo railway's success proved that a larger gauge could be viable for railways isolated from the extant 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) gauge Western European network.

In 1840, work started on the second railway in the Russian Empire, the Warsaw–Vienna railway in Congress Poland. It was a 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge, with the express intention of allowing through-freight trains into Austria-Hungary.

The modern Russian railway network solidified around the Saint Petersburg–Moscow railway, built in 1842. There, the Tsar established a committee to recommend technical standards for the building of Russia's first major railway. The team included devotees of Franz Anton von Gerstner, who pushed to continue the Tsarskoye Selo gauge, and engineer Pavel Melnikov and his consultant George Washington Whistler, a prominent American railway engineer. Whistler recommended 5 ft (1,524 mm) on the basis that it was cheaper to construct than 6 ft (1,829 mm) and cheaper to maintain than 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in). His advice won over the Tsar.

At the time, questions of continuity with the European network did not arise. By the time difficulties arose in connecting the Prussian railroads to the Russian ones in Warsaw in the 1850s, it was too late to change.

A persistent myth holds that Imperial Russia chose a gauge broader than standard gauge for military reasons, namely to prevent potential invaders from using the rail system. The Russian military recognized as early as 1841 that operations to disrupt railway track did not depend on the gauge, and should instead focus on destroying bridges and tunnels. However, in both World Wars the break of gauge did pose some amount of obstacle to the invading Germans.

Expansion

The 5-foot gauge became the standard in the Russian Empire and later the Soviet Union.

Russian engineers used it on the Chinese Eastern Railway, built in the closing years of the 19th century across the Northeastern China entry to provide a shortcut for the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok. The railway's southern branch, from Harbin via Changchun to Lüshun, used Russian gauge. As a result of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, its southernmost section from Changchun to Lüshun was lost to the Japanese, who promptly regauged it to standard gauge, after using the narrow 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm) for a short time during the war. This formed a break of gauge between Changchun and Kuancheng, the station just to the north of Changchun, still in Russian hands, until the rest of the former Chinese Eastern Railway was converted to standard gauge, probably in the 1930s.

Unlike in South Manchuria, the Soviet Union's reconquest of southern Sakhalin from Japan did not result in immediate regauging of the railway system. Southern Sakhalin continued with the original Japanese 1,067 mm (3 ft 6 in) gauge, simultaneously with the Russian gauge railway, constructed in the northern part of the island in 1930-1932 (Moskalvo-Okha). Sakhalin's railway network has no fixed connection with the mainland. Before 2019, rail cars coming from the mainland port of Vanino on the Vanino-Kholmsk train ferry, operating since 1973, had to have their bogies changed in the Sakhalin port of Kholmsk. In 2004 and 2008 plans were put forward to convert the island's railway network to the Russian gauge. The conversion was completed in 2019.

There were proposals in 2013 for north–south and east–west lines in Afghanistan, with construction to start in 2013.

Panama, 1850

The Panama Canal Railway, first constructed in ca. 1850, was built in 5 ft (1,524 mm) gauge. During canal construction (1904–1914), this same gauge was chosen for both construction traffic, canal operating services along the quays, and the newly routed commercial cross-isthmus railway. In 2000 the gauge for the commercial parallel railway was changed to 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) to use standard gauge equipment. The original gauge was chosen under the influence of the pre-conversion southern United States railway companies. The electric manoeuvering locomotives along the locks (mules) still use the 5 ft gauge that was laid during canal construction.

Finland, 1862

The first rail line in Finland was opened in January 1862. As Finland was a grand duchy within the Russian Empire, railways were also built to the (5 ft) broad track gauge of 1,524 mm (5 ft). However the railway systems were not connected until the bridge over the River Neva was built in 1913. Russian trains could not have run on Finnish tracks, because the Finnish loading gauge was narrower, until the connection was made and the Finnish structure gauge was widened.