Railways with a railway track gauge of 5 ft first appeared in the United Kingdom and the United States. This gauge became commonly known as "Russian gauge", because the government of the Russian Empir
5 ft (1,524 mm) gauge rail network in the Southern United States (1861)
Russia was and is the largest country in the world. Its geography of north–south rivers and east–west commerce, plus, importantly, the mostly flat terrain, made it very suited to develop railroads as
Railways in the Russian Empire around 1900
Russian railroads construction by year 1837–1989
Model (2002) of the steam locomotive constructed by Cherepanov (1834)
People of all ethnicities and walks of life would meet on Russian trains (sketch by Vasily Perov, 1880)