Got a couple of questions regarding changes to the history of the British railways. Technically this could go in the Before 1900 forum since that's when the points of divergence are but I'm mostly interested in possible modern consequences.
I was reading a book a few weeks ago, I forget the title, but it mentioned that during the planning stages of the London & Manchester Railway there was a debate between the Rennie brothers, John and George, and George Stephenson over what track gauge to use. The Rennies favoured 5ft 6in, what was later became known as 'Indian gauge', whilst Stephenson preferred 4ft 8.5in, what became the 'standard gauge', with the author arguing that since there was only roughly 375 miles of railway track in the UK at the time with much of it being disjointed small lines and the L&MR being the first trunk line that if they had gone for 5ft 6in if would have established it as the effective default standard. Now personally I'm somewhat rather sceptical of this claim, much as I was of a number of other claims they made, but suppose for a moment that 5ft 6in had been used and become the default standard, would it have created any major differences over time? As I understand things the wider the track gauge the larger the minimum curve radii needed but other than that I have no idea.
For the second scenario back in the early days of the railway industry if you wanted to build a railway you generally needed an act of parliament to help with things such as setting up the company as a limited liability one and with buying the land needed for the tracks. Enter Robert Smith, Member of Parliament for Dunny-on-the-Wold, who is both popular and influential in the House. Whilst generally supportive of these new-fangled railways he's also something of a claustrophobe so when the various acts start appearing over the years he uses his position and influence to have a minimum tunnel size and distance from the trains rule added to each of them, coincidentally this just happens to work out as roughly what the modern day European loading gauge happens to be. As is the British way of things since over the decades the rule keeps getting added after a while it effectively becomes convention, eventually becoming the official standard. Aside from the obvious knock-on effects such as raising costs somewhat due to slightly taller or wider tunnels and bridges having to be built what are the likely knock-on effects?
I was reading a book a few weeks ago, I forget the title, but it mentioned that during the planning stages of the London & Manchester Railway there was a debate between the Rennie brothers, John and George, and George Stephenson over what track gauge to use. The Rennies favoured 5ft 6in, what was later became known as 'Indian gauge', whilst Stephenson preferred 4ft 8.5in, what became the 'standard gauge', with the author arguing that since there was only roughly 375 miles of railway track in the UK at the time with much of it being disjointed small lines and the L&MR being the first trunk line that if they had gone for 5ft 6in if would have established it as the effective default standard. Now personally I'm somewhat rather sceptical of this claim, much as I was of a number of other claims they made, but suppose for a moment that 5ft 6in had been used and become the default standard, would it have created any major differences over time? As I understand things the wider the track gauge the larger the minimum curve radii needed but other than that I have no idea.
For the second scenario back in the early days of the railway industry if you wanted to build a railway you generally needed an act of parliament to help with things such as setting up the company as a limited liability one and with buying the land needed for the tracks. Enter Robert Smith, Member of Parliament for Dunny-on-the-Wold, who is both popular and influential in the House. Whilst generally supportive of these new-fangled railways he's also something of a claustrophobe so when the various acts start appearing over the years he uses his position and influence to have a minimum tunnel size and distance from the trains rule added to each of them, coincidentally this just happens to work out as roughly what the modern day European loading gauge happens to be. As is the British way of things since over the decades the rule keeps getting added after a while it effectively becomes convention, eventually becoming the official standard. Aside from the obvious knock-on effects such as raising costs somewhat due to slightly taller or wider tunnels and bridges having to be built what are the likely knock-on effects?