Battle of Track gauges

 Lord Dalhousie, while formulating the railway policy for India, had suggested that a uniform gauge system should be adopted for the entire Indian Railway network. The gauge, the distance between the two inner faces of the rails of a railway track, selected for India was of 5 feet six inches.

 Lord Dalhousie had stated that an intermediate gauge between 4'-8 ½" and 7'-0" was the best gauge especially for India which would substantially command all the possible benefits of the latter." The Court of Directors accepted 5'-6" as the gauge for India and the Government of India further confirmed their decision in favor of 5'-6" and in 1851, it was accepted as the standard gauge for the railways in India.

 

An official change in gauge

 The uniformity of gauge was maintained till 1862. But Lord Mayo, the then viceroy of India, was a great enthusiast of the metric system. He encouraged the building of meter gauge lines in India during his tenure. It was seen as a compromise between proposals for narrow gauge for use in areas with limited traffic.

 It was decided that the subsidiary lines to the main railway system, on which large traffic was not expected, should be constructed on narrow gauge light system and subsequently connected to a broader gauge. Thus, the meter gauge came into existence.

 Such was the craze of Lord Mayo for metric systems that he even wanted to replace other existing systems in the country, but was prevented by doing so by strong British bureaucracy. In fact, it was his predecessor, Sir John Lawrence, who had initiated the process of laying the meter gauge lines in India, which Lord Mayo took up with such zeal.

 Now, each time a railway line was proposed in India, fresh controversy over the gauge to be adopted arose.

 By 1889, the mileage of different gauges was -- broad gauge (5 feet six inches) 8,000 miles, meter gauge (I meter) 5,000 miles and narrow gauge 250 miles.

 Today, India has four major gauges -- broad (five feet six inches), meter (three feet three inches), two feet six inches (narrow gauge) and two feet (narrow gauge).