Category talk:Narrow gauge railways in the United Kingdom

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category mainspace essay

There is little dispute that the UK is the birthplace of the railway. Thanks to George Stephenson, the burgeoning railway system in the UK adopted a 'standardised' gauge (ie the distance between the two rails) of 4' 8½", which became adopted worldwide as the 'standard gauge'. What is less well known is that the world's first narrow gauge railway was the Festiniog Railway which demonstrated that a fully commercial railway system could operate successfully with a gauge as little 1' 11½". It was also in the UK that the Talyllyn Railway became the world's first to be owned by a preservation society run by volunteers.

Two driving forces influenced the decision to build a railway to a narrower gauge than the standard; topography and economy. In some cases, the lie of the land was such that tight curves were needed to, for example, thread the railway through mountainous terrain; the narrower the gauge the sharper the curves can be. Narrow gauge railways are also cheaper to build; not only do they take up less room than standard gauge railways, their trackwork and rolling stock tends to be less expensive.

In the great Victorian railway boom in the UK, there was no 'standardised' gauge for narrow gauge systems. As a consequence, there were in excess of 20 different gauges adopted by UK narrow gauge railways, ranging from 1' 6" for the Royal Arsenal Railway to 4' 2" for the Peak Forest Railway. This does not include 'miniature railways' which are usually (though not exclusively) built for pleasure to a gauge less than 1' 6". It could be argued that the narrowest narrow gauge railway in the UK was actually 0. The Listowel and Ballybunion Railway was built as a monorail - though some might argue it was not a monorail in the pure sense as it included two additional guide rails.

Fortunately, a number of the UK's narrow gauge railways have been or are being preserved. However, many have now disappeared and may never be restored to their former glory.