Andrew Robert Breen wrote:

In article . com,
Mizter T wrote:
Andrew Robert Breen wrote:

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.

I'll be the mug who volunteers to look stupid and ask which railway is
the "Big Mistake One"?

Sorry. An it's an accepted convention in some groups, but not (yet!)
universal in this 'un. Big Mistake One = 1914-1918, the Great War, the
First World War and other less descriptive titles. Of course, the First
Big Mistake of Big Mistake One (one of its causes, in fact), was
planning which put railway timetables ahead of diplomacy..

I'll not make that interpretational mistake again, thanks for the
explaination. I'm guessing that "Big Mistake Two" isn't a phrase that's
in common use.


My point was that I can't think of a railway network which was started
from new much after 1914 which went for sub-standard gauge. Some of the
French NG lines, maybe, and a few isolated lines in .uk; but in
all those cases the driver was cheap ex-trench-supply-railway rails and
stock. The people building the lines forgot about all the ex-military
lorries and drivers who'd learned to drive 'em, of course..

And why were the trench-supply lines NG? Ability to fit around tighter
corners in a (ahem) highly-structured (and repeatedly re-structured)
landscape - so it's back to ease of initial construction.


A good point. The trench supply railways are something I know very
little about.