Question

why was solving the gauge problem the key to creating an efficient network

Answer 1

Answer:

Standardization of American Rail Gauge

George Stephenson, who built the first practical steam locomotive in England, laid his rails based on the width of coal wagons.  Laying the rails five feet apart and accounting for two inch wheels and a bit of leeway, the resulting space between the rails, or the rail gauge, was four feet eight and a half inches.  Stephenson used that gauge in 1830 when designing the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the first rail line in England.   The width came to be called the "Stephenson gauge."  Opinions varied on the best rail gauge and a few British railroads chose different, wider gauges.  However, they soon realized their tracks would ultimately have to become compatible with the Stephenson gauge or offload the passengers and freight to a new train when incompatible rails met.  By the mid-1840s, by act of Parliament the Stephenson gauge became the designated standard gauge for England.

American railroads would also eventually adopt the Stephenson, or standard, gauge.  Both the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads laid rails with the four-foot-eight-and-a-half-inch gauge while building the transcontinental railroad, but the American path toward standardization was not nearly as straightforward as England's.

Because the British were the first to build railroads, some American engineers went to England to study railroad construction, and tended to use the Stephenson gauge.  The first railroad in the state of New York, the Mohawk & Hudson, opened in 1831 using the Stephenson gauge, and a few others followed suit, but rail gauge was often chosen according to the inclination of the engineer in charge and some believed that a wider gauge would give a locomotive more stability.

Comparison of some railroad gauges

Comparison of some railroad gauges

Scotch, narrow- 4 ft. 6 in.

Common English & American- 4 ft. 8 in.

Eastern counties & Blackwall, England -5 ft.

Scotch, broad, Canadian Grand Trunk, East Indian -5 ft. 6 in.

Irish - 6 ft. 2 in.

Great Western (English broad) - 7 ft.

American railroads were planned to serve cities and their surrounding areas with little thought that these networks would eventually meet.  From the 1830s through the 1850s, the number of gauges proliferated.  For example, the Camden & Amboy railroad, though in the vicinity of the Mohawk & Hudson, chose a four-foot-nine-and-three-quarter-inch gauge.  In the South, the Charleston & Hamburg railway was built with a five-foot gauge.  Nearby states that wanted to interact with the line, copied the gauge, so by 1861, over 7,000 miles of track with this wider gauge had been laid throughout the South.  The Ohio legislature established a four-foot-ten-inch gauge of for the state.  The state of California chose a gauge of five feet, and some railroads in Missouri and Texas chose six feet.  By the 1870s, there were over twenty different gauges in use in America.