Broad gauge railways use a rail gauge (distance between the rails) greater than the standard gauge of 4 ft 8½ in (1435 mm).
In Britain the Great Western Railway designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel pioneered broad gauge from 1838 with a gauge of 7 ft 0¼ in (2140 mm), and retained this gauge until 1892.
While the parliament initially supported the broad gauge, it was eventually rejected by the Gauge Commission in favour of all railways being built to Standard Gauge for compatibility. Parliament was more co ...
Some applications for railways require broader gauges, including:
Telescopes
Rocket launchers
Ship railways
These applications might use double track of the country's usual gauge to provide the necessary stability and axle load.
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Where trains encounter a different gauge (a break-of-gauge), such as at the Spanish-French border or the Russian-Chinese one, the traditional solution has always been transshipment - transferring passengers and freight to cars on the other system. This is obviously far from optimal, and a number of more efficient schemes have been devised. One common one is to build cars to the smaller of the two systems' loading gauges with bogies that are easily removed and replaced, with switching of the bogies at an interchange location on the border. Th ...
