Opinion and Answer 23 Edition 49: Railway Break of gauge
Good Sunday afternoon everyone, It's time for another edition of Opinion & Answer. In today's edition, I want to try my best to give an overview of the term "Break of gauge" for those who may not know what the term is about in regards to the railways.
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From a Wikipedia article titled "Break of gauge":
"a break of gauge occurs where a line of one track gauge (the distance between the rails, or between the wheels of trains designed to run on those rails) meets a line of a different gauge. Trains and rolling stock generally cannot run through without some form of conversion between gauges, leading to passengers having to change trains and freight requiring transloading or transshipping; this can add delays, costs, and inconvenience to travel on such a route."
Simply put, there's a change between two different size gauges on the railway that meet at either an intersection or in an exchange yard where the train switches between two different rail tracks.
If you look back into the history of the railway gauges for the term "break of gauge", you'll look for the fact that it was a common issue in early days where a common system of railway gauges have not been set up and each country or area had their favorite gauge on their railway network because of either its for mechanical and engineering reason OR commercial and competitive reason. When a "break of gauge" has to occur, the normal solution has been transloading which is defined as transfer of passengers and freight to cars on the other system.
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That is all for this edition of Opinion & Answer for this Sunday. Please join me again next Sunday's Opinion & Answer where I'll try to do an overview of bogie exchange and variable gauge.
