A narrow-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge narrower than standard 1,435 mm. Most narrow-gauge railways are between 600 mm and 1,067 mm.
A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of 1,435 mm. The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge after George Stephenson, International gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in the EU and Russia. It is the most widely used railway track gauge across the world, with approximately 55% of the lines in the world using it. All high-speed rail lines use standard gauge except those in Russia, Finland, Portugal and Uzbekistan. The distance between the inside edges of the rails is defined to be 1435 mm except in the United States, where it is still defined in U.S. customary units as exactly "four feet eight and one half inches".
A broad-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge broader than the 1,435 mm standard-gauge railways.
A dual gauge railway is a track that allows the passage of trains of two different track gauges. It is sometimes called a "mixed gauge" track. A dual gauge track consists of three rails. There will be two vital rails, one for each gauge close together and a third rail, a "common" rail further away. Sometimes, four rails are required using two outer and two inner rails to create the dual gauge. Dual gauge is not to be confused with a "third rail" or "check or guard rails".
The Australian state of New South Wales has an extensive network of railways, which were integral to the growth and development of the state. The vast majority of railway lines were government built and operated, but there were also several private railways, some of which operate to this day.
Lithuanian Railways is the national, state-owned railway company of Lithuania. It operates most railway lines in the country.
Australians generally assumed in the 1850s that railways would be built by the private sector. Private companies built railways in the then colonies of Victoria, opened in 1854, and New South Wales, where the company was taken over by the government before completion in 1855, due to bankruptcy. South Australia's railways were government owned from the beginning, including a horse-drawn line opened in 1854 and a steam-powered line opened in 1856. In Victoria, the private railways were soon found not to be financially viable, and existing rail networks and their expansion was taken over by the colony. Government ownership also enabled railways to be built to promote development, even if not apparently viable in strictly financial terms. The railway systems spread from the colonial capitals, except in cases where geography dictated a choice of an alternate port.
With railways, a break of gauge occurs where a line of one gauge meets a line of a different gauge. Trains and rolling stock cannot run through without some form of conversion between gauges, and freight and passengers must otherwise be transshipped. A break of gauge adds delays, cost, and inconvenience.
The first railway in colonial South Australia was a horse-drawn tramway from the port of Goolwa on the Murray River to an ocean harbour at Port Elliot in 1854. Today the state has 1,600 mm broad gauge suburban railways in Adelaide, a number of country freight lines, as well as key 1,435 mm standard gauge links to other states.
The Ōu Main Line is a railway line in Japan, operated by the East Japan Railway Company. It connects Fukushima Station through Akita Station to Aomori Station. Since the opening of the Yamagata Shinkansen on July 1, 1992, the Fukushima–Yamagata section is sometimes referred to as the Yamagata Line. The name of the line as a whole refers to the ancient provinces of Mutsu (陸奥) and Dewa (出羽), as it connects both ends of Mutsu by passing north-south through Dewa.
Railways with a railway track gauge of 5 ft were first constructed in the United Kingdom and the United States. This gauge is also commonly called Russian gauge because this gauge was later chosen as the common track gauge for the Russian Empire and its neighbouring countries. The gauge was redefined by Soviet Railways to be 1,520 mm.
Rail gauges in Australia display significant variations, which has presented an extremely difficult problem for rail transport on the Australian continent for over 150 years. As of 2014, there is 11,801 kilometres (7,333 mi) of narrow-gauge railways, 17,381 kilometres (10,800 mi) of standard gauge railways and 3,221 kilometres (2,001 mi) of broad gauge railways.
The Queensland rail network, the first in the world to adopt 1,067 mm narrow gauge for a main line, and now the second largest narrow gauge network in the world, consists of:
Track gauge in Canada is standard gauge of 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in, except for Toronto transit systems. Rail lines built during the 19th century with a broad gauge of 5 ft 6 in were converted to standard gauge.
In Hong Kong, the three ex-KCR lines and the Light Rail service use 1,435 mmstandard gauge. New extensions to the Island Line and Kwun Tong Line, as well as the South Island Line, also use the 1,435 mm gauge.
The vast majority of North American railroads are standard gauge. Exceptions include some streetcar, subway and rapid transit systems, mining and tunneling operations, and some narrow-gauge lines particularly in the west, e.g. the isolated White Pass and Yukon Route system, and the former Newfoundland Railway.
Rail transport in North Korea is provided by Korean State Railway which is the only rail operator in North Korea. It has a network of over 6,000 km of track, of which the vast majority is standard gauge; there is, however, nearly 400 km of narrow-gauge lines (762 mm) in various locations around the country.
Originally, various gauges were used in the United States. Some railways, primarily in the northeast, used standard gauge of 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in ; others used gauges ranging from 2 ft to 6 ft. As a general rule, southern railroads were built to one or another broad gauge, mostly 5 ft, while northern railroads that were not standard-gauge tended to be narrow-gauge. The Pacific Railroad Acts of 1863 specified standard gauge.
