3 ft 6 in gauge railways


Railways with a track gauge of were first constructed as horse-drawn wagonways. From the mid-nineteenth century, the gauge became widespread in the British Empire, was known as the Cape Gauge, and was adopted as a standard in Japan and Taiwan.
There are approximately of gauge track in the world, which are classified as narrow gauge railways.

History

;1795: One of the first railways to use gauge was the Little Eaton Gangway in England, constructed as a horse-drawn wagonway in 1795. Other gauge wagonways in England and Wales were also built in the early nineteenth century.
;1809: The Silkstone Waggonway was opened, connecting the Barnsley Canal to collieries including the Huskar Pit
;1862: In 1862 the Norwegian engineer Carl Abraham Pihl constructed the first gauge railway in Norway, the Røros Line.
;1865: In 1865 the Queensland Railways were constructed. Its gauge was promoted by the Irish engineer Abraham Fitzgibbon and consulting engineer Charles Fox.
;1867: In 1867, the construction of the railroad from the Castillo de Buitrón mine to the pier of San Juan del Puerto, Huelva, Spain, began. The width was.
;1868: In 1868 Charles Fox asks civil engineer Edmund Wragge to survey a railway in Costa Rica.
;1871: In 1871 the Canadian Toronto, Grey and Bruce Railway and the Toronto and Nipissing Railway were opened, promoted by Pihl and Fitzgibbon and surveyed by Wragge as an engineer of Fox.
;1872
;1873
;1876: Natal also converted its short long Durban network from standard gauge prior to commencing with construction of a network across the entire colony in 1876. Other new railways in Southern Africa, notably Mozambique, Bechuanaland, the Rhodesias, Nyasaland and Angola, were also constructed in gauge during that time.
;After 1876: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century numerous gauge tram systems were built in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

Nomenclature

In Sweden, the gauge was nicknamed Blekinge gauge, as most of the railways in the province of Blekinge had this gauge.
An alternate name for this gauge, Cape gauge, is named after the Cape Colony in what is now South Africa, which adopted it in 1873. The term Cape Gauge is used in other languages, such as the Dutch kaapspoor, German Kapspur, Norwegian kappspor and French voie cape. After metrication in the 1960s, the gauge was referred to in official South African Railways publications as instead of 1067 mm.
The gauge name Colonial Gauge was used in New Zealand.
In Australia the imperial term 3 foot 6 inch is used. In some Australian publications the term medium gauge is also used, while in Australian states where or is the norm, gauge is often referred to as narrow gauge.
In Japan gauge is referred to as, which directly translates as narrow gauge. It is defined in metric units.

Similar gauges

Similar, but incompatible without wheelset adjustment, rail gauges in respect of aspects such as cost of construction, practical minimum radius curves and the maximum physical dimensions of rolling stock are: