In article .com,
allan tracy wrote:
I also wondered whether rural lines might be better relaid in narrow
guage or railways such as the Waverley route be reinstated for less
cost.

I got quite a few replies most informing me that there were absolutely
no cost advantages for the narrower guages and that my suggestions were
a complete waste of time.

Not strictly accurate (to euphemise..): you were told that there
were significant cost advantages when building a new formation (when
engineering a new route - and obviously this does not apply if you're
re-opening an already-engineered formation or modifying an existing
line) but that differences in running costs were minimal (given
similar sizes and weights of stock) and that the absence of through-
running, with all that entails in loss of flexibility and increased
costs of transhipment was a serious demerit.

Of course, this still begs the question as to why so much of the World
has railways with narrower guage than standard?

To minimise the costs of //the original engineering of the route//.

Surely, someone must have thought it was a good idea at the time but
why?

See above. OTOH, no-one has started building a new network from scratch
at less than standard gauge for a long time: not since Big Mistake One,
IIRC.

--
Andy Breen ~ Not speaking on behalf of the University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Feng Shui: an ancient oriental art for extracting
money from the gullible (Martin Sinclair)