Re: Why trains don't catch on here in the "ex-colonies".
Reply #142 –
mjm, who the hell ever wanted or proposed to do that?
Well---actually---- in the early history of American rail, they did exactly that. Seemed every railroad had its favorite gauge, and if you wanted to take train from one place to another you might have three or four different gauges between rails. Some passenger cars were built to be able to run on this, they had wheel sets designed to run on different rails systems. This didn't work as well as one would hope (no surprise there) and some notable incidents were caused when one of these "compromise cars" wandered a bit and got out of sorts. This was back in the days when cars were made of wood, and warmed by a coal-fired stove in the car--- so any accident during the cold months usually produced devastating fires into the bargain.
A few really bad accidents later, they settled on 4'8.5" for standard gauge between the rails in the US.