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[quote user="John WR"][quote user="Bucyrus"]In the beginning, railroads were not much concerned about interchangeability, so standardizing gage was not that obvious of a benefit.  Once railroad systems grew large enough to frequently connect, the benefit of interchangeability became an obvious objective.[/quote] From what I have read many private railroads did not want to interchange with other railroads.  They thought it would erode their profits.  They were also afraid their rolling stock would be lost or stolen and they mistrusted each other so much that fear was valid.  At the bottom, they just were not able to trust each other and so tried to insulate themselves from each other as much as possible.    [/quote] No doubt there was some of that, but overall, I don’t think their motives were that cynical.  The narrower the gage, the lower the cost of construction; and the wider the gage, the more stable the trains rode.  And within that framework there were many complex tradeoffs and compromises that played out in the economics of construction and operation.  The pros and cons of gage even varied with the terrain.  And this all had to be reconciled against the expansion of business that was surely anticipated.  The choice of gage could be an extremely daunting decision because so much was at stake and once the decision was made, it was nearly impossible to change.  Some learned the hard way when they were ultimately forced to heroically change the gage of their entire system in a matter of hours in order to do so with the least disruption to traffic and business.
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