Editing Path dependence (section)

===Railway track gauges===

The standard [[Track gauge|gauge]] of railway tracks is another example of path dependence which explains how a seemingly insignificant event or circumstance can change the choice of technology over the long run despite contemporary know-how showing such a choice to be inefficient.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Puffert |first1=Douglas J. |title=Path Dependence in Spatial Networks: The Standardization of Railway Track Gauge |journal=Explorations in Economic History |date=1 July 2002 |volume=39 |issue=3 |pages=282–314 |doi=10.1006/exeh.2002.0786 |url=https://doi.org/10.1006/exeh.2002.0786 |language=en |issn=0014-4983}}</ref> 

More than half the world's railway gauges are {{convert|4|ft|8+1/2|in|cm}}, known as [[standard gauge]], despite the consensus among engineers being that wider gauges have increased performance{{huh|date=November 2020}} and speed. The path to the adoption of the standard gauge began in the late 1820s when George Stephenson, a British engineer, began work on the [[Liverpool and Manchester Railway]]. His experience with primitive coal tramways resulted in this gauge width being copied by the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, then the rest of Great Britain, and finally by railroads in Europe and North America.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Puffert |first1=Douglas J. |title=The Standardization of Track Gauge on North American Railways, 1830–1890 |journal=The Journal of Economic History |date=December 2000 |volume=60 |issue=4 |pages=933–960 |doi=10.1017/S0022050700026322 |s2cid=13721300 |url=(4), 933–960. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022050700026322 |language=en |issn=0022-0507}}</ref> 

There are tradeoffs involved in the choice of rail gauge between the cost of constructing a line (which rises with wider gauges) and various performance metrics, including maximum speed, low [[center of gravity]] (desirable, especially in [[double-stack rail transport]]). While the attempts with [[Brunel gauge]], a significantly broader gauge failed, the widespread use of [[Iberian gauge]], [[Russian gauge]] and [[Indian gauge]], all of which are broader than Stephenson's choice, show that there is nothing inherent to the 1435 mm gauge that led to its global success.