George Stephenson
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George Stephenson was an English civil engineer and mechanical engineer during the Industrial Revolution. Renowned as the "Father of Railways", Stephenson was considered by the Victorians as a great example of diligent application and thirst for improvement. His chosen rail gauge, sometimes called "Stephenson gauge", was the basis for the 4-foot-8+1⁄2-inch (1.435 m) standard gauge used by most of the world's railways.
George Stephenson
Dial Cottage, West Moor, Killingworth. The sun-dial made and installed by George Stephenson is above the front door.
Stephenson's safety lamp shown with Davy's lamp on the left
Early Stephenson locomotive in Samuel Smiles' Lives of the Engineers (1862). Called an 1816 Killingworth Colliery locomotive (often claimed to be Blücher), it looks more like the slightly later Hetton colliery railway locomotives whose 1852 replica Lyons was still operating in Smiles' time.
Track gauge
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In rail transport, track gauge is the distance between the two rails of a railway track. All vehicles on a rail network must have wheelsets that are compatible with the track gauge. Since many different track gauges exist worldwide, gauge differences often present a barrier to wider operation on railway networks.
Fish-belly cast-iron rails from the Cromford and High Peak Railway
An early Stephenson locomotive
Triple gauge, from left: 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in), 1,000 mm (3 ft 3+3⁄8 in), and 600 mm (1 ft 11+5⁄8 in), on display at the China Railway Museum in Beijing
A cartoon depicting the horrors of goods transfer at the break of gauge at Gloucester in 1843