A broad-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge broader than the 1,435 mm standard-gauge railways. Introduced in Europe, broad gauge has given way to standard gauge in Europe, United States and Canada. Broad gauge of 1,676 mm known as Indian Gauge, is the dominant track gauge used in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Chile, on the BART in the San Francisco Bay Area. Broad gauge was first used in Great Britain in Scotland for two short, isolated lines, the Dundee and Arbroath Railway and the Arbroath and Forfar Railway. Both the lines were built in 5 ft 6 in. Both the lines were subsequently converted to standard gauge and connected to the emerging Scottish rail network; the Great Western Railway, was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, in 1838, with a gauge of 7 ft 1⁄4 in, retained this gauge until 1892. Some harbours used railways of this gauge for construction and maintenance; these included Portland Harbour and Holyhead Breakwater, which used a locomotive for working sidings. As it was not connected to the national network, this broad-gauge operation continued until the locomotive wore out in 1913.

The gauge proposed by Brunel was 7 ft but this was soon increased by 1⁄4 in to 7 ft 1⁄4 in to accommodate clearance problems identified during early testing. George Stephenson was to add an extra half inch to his original 4 ft 8 in gauge for the same reason. While the parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was prepared to authorise lines built to the broad gauge of 7 ft, it was rejected by the Gauge Commission in favour of all new railways in England and Scotland being built to standard gauge of 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in, this being the gauge with the greatest mileage. Railways which had received their enabling Act would continue at the 7 ft gauge. Ireland, using the same criteria, was allocated a different standard gauge, the Irish gauge, of 5 ft 3 in, used in the Australian states of South Australia and Victoria. Broad-gauge lines in Britain were converted to dual gauge or standard gauge from 1864, the last of Brunel's broad gauge was converted over a single weekend in 1892. In 1839 the Netherlands started its railway system with two broad-gauge railways.

The chosen gauge of 1,945 mm was applied between 1839 and 1866 by the Hollandsche IJzeren Spoorweg-Maatschappij for its Amsterdam–The Hague–Rotterdam line and between 1842 and 1855, firstly by the Dutch state, but soon by the Nederlandsche Rhijnspoorweg-Maatschappij, for its Amsterdam–Utrecht–Arnhem line. But the neighbouring countries Prussia and Belgium used standard gauge, so the two companies had to regauge their first lines. In 1855, NRS regauged its line and shortly afterwards connected to the Prussian railways; the HSM followed in 1866. There are replicas of one broad-gauge 2-2-2 locomotive and three carriages in the Dutch Railway Museum in Utrecht; these replicas were built for the 100th anniversary of the Dutch Railways in 1938–39. The erstwhile Great Indian Peninsula Railway introduced a broad gauge of 1,676 mm for the first passenger railway line in India, between Bori Bunder and Thane; this was adopted as the standard throughout the country, as it was thought to be safer in areas prone to cyclones and flooding.

The 1,676 mm gauge is now referred to as Indian gauge. While some initial freight railway lines in India were built using standard gauge, most of the standard and narrow gauge railways have since been dismantled and relaid in broad gauge. Ireland and some states in Australia and Brazil have a gauge of 5 ft 3 in, but Luas, the Dublin light rail system, is built to standard gauge. Russia and the other former Soviet Republics use a 1,520 mm gauge while Finland continues to use the 5 ft gauge inherited from Imperial Russia. Portugal and the Spanish Renfe system use a gauge of 1,668 mm called Ancho Ibérico in Spanish or Bitola Ibérica in Portuguese. In Toronto, the gauge for TTC subways and streetcars was chosen in 1861. Toronto adopted a unique gauge of 4 ft 10 7⁄8 in, an "overgauge" stated to "allow horse-drawn wagons to use the rails", but with the practical effect of precluding the use of standard-gauge equipment in the street; the Toronto Transit Commission still operates the Toronto streetcar system and three subway lines on its own unique gauge of 4 ft 10 7⁄8 in.

The Scarborough RT, uses standard gauge, as will the future light rail lines of the Transit City plan. In 1851 the 5 ft 6 in broad gauge was adopted as the standard gauge for the Province of Canada, becoming known as the Provincial gauge, government subsidies were unavailable for railways that chose other gauges; this caused problems in interchanging freight cars with northern United States railroads, most of which were built to standard gauge or a gauge similar to it. In the 1870s between 1872 and 1874, Canadian broad-gauge lines were changed to standard gauge to facilitate interchange and the exchange of rolling stock with American railroads. Today, all Canadian railways are standard-gauge. In the early days of rail transport in the US, railways tended to be built out from coastal cities into the hinterland, systems did not connect; each builder was

Robert Franz was a German composer of lieder. He was born Robert Franz Julius Knauth in Halle, the son of Christoph Franz Knauth. In 1847, Christoph Knauth adopted his middle name Franz as his new surname, his son followed suit, he suffered in early life from the hostility of his parents to a musical career. He was twenty years old when his father's animosity was conquered and he was allowed to live in Dessau to study organ playing under Friedrich Schneider; the two years of study under that famous teacher were advantageous chiefly in making him uncommonly intimate with the works of Bach and Händel, his knowledge of which be shown in his editions of the former's St Matthew Passion and ten cantatas, the latter's Messiah and L'Allegro, although some of these editions have long been controversial among musicians. In 1843 he published his first book of songs, followed by some fifty more books, containing in all about 250 songs. In his native Halle he filled various public offices, including those of city organist as well as conductor of the Singakademie and the Symphony.

He served as royal music-director and music master at the university. The first book of songs was warmly praised by Liszt and Schumann, the latter wrote a lengthy review of it in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and published it separately as well. Deafness began to make itself apparent as early as 1841. Franz suffered from a nervous disorder that in 1868 compelled him to resign his offices, his future was provided for by Franz Liszt, Joseph Joachim and others, who gave him the receipts of a concert tour amounting to some 100,000 marks. In 1878 or 1879, he made an extensive search for Bach manuscripts in various towns and country houses in Germany, he discovered a park surrounding Schloss Witzthun where young trees were being protected from their supporting poles by paper instead of the customary cloth or leather. On examination, the paper turned out to be Bach manuscripts. After questioning the gardener, Franz found a trunk of them, including a number of violin sonatas. Although this account was printed in the New York Times, Franz declared it was "entirely untrue".

In addition to songs, he set the 117th Psalm for a four-part Kyrie. He transcribed Schubert's String Quartet in D minor for piano duet and made arrangements of Mozart's Quintets in C minor and C major, he died in Halle. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. "Franz, Robert". Encyclopædia Britannica. Cambridge University Press. Free scores by Robert Franz in the Choral Public Domain Library Free scores by Robert Franz at the International Music Score Library Project Free digital scores by Robert Franz in the OpenScore Lieder Corpus Catalog of works and Lieder project at the Digital Robert Franz Library The Mutopia Project has compositions by Robert Franz "Franz, Robert". Collier's New Encyclopedia. 1921

Frank Talk was a political magazine established in 1984 in South Africa, arising out of the student-led anti-apartheid movement of the 1970s and 80s. Frank Talk was the pseudonym under which Steve Biko wrote several articles as the Publications Director of the South African Students' Organisation, Frank Talk became the title of the magazine published by the Azanian People's Organisation, a nationalist group committed to Biko's ideas of Black Consciousness. Biko's prolific SASO writings were published in early volumes of Frank Talk, throughout its history the magazine remained committed to the Black Consciousness ideology responsible for mobilizing student-led anti-apartheid resistance. Exploring the theory of Black Consciousness and related issues of race and racism, theology and revolution, Frank Talk became a platform for rigorous political analysis of the frustrations and problems of black students and black people generally. Available in both Afrikaans and English, several issues of the journal were banned for distribution by South Africa's apartheid government.

The last issue of Frank Talk was published in 1990. Material in this article is duplicated from chimurengalibrary.co.za, released by GFDL