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[quote user="John WR"] [quote user="tomikawaTT"]"Standard gauge" became standardized by Federal fiat when the Congress decreed that the UP/CP had to build to the standards of the Baltimore and Ohio in 1862.[/quote] Certainly the decision that the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific should use standard gauge is important to US railroads.  What strikes me is that private railroad companies did not see this on their own but had to be bought to it by the United States Government.  Still, some railroads resisted.  For example, the Erie continued to use a 6 foot gauge until 1880 when the railroad finally saw the light.  [/quote] John, I still don’t see why you would expect them to have begun with an agreed upon standard gage.  In the first place, when they began, interchangeability was not an objective.  In the second place, nobody agreed on what the optimum gage was. But let’s consider a hypothetical example.  Say you run a country in the age before railroads, and you have just invented the railroad concept.  You want to use it as a universal transportation system in your country.  So right from the very start, you know you need an identical gage throughout your system.  What gage would you choose?
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