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Nobody really knows. It was decided back in the XIX century when the rail network was build. The most common answer is that they thought larger locomotives woul
by Maken 1y ago
Nobody really knows. It was decided back in the XIX century when the rail network was build. The most common answer is that they thought larger locomotives would be required to climb the mountainous terrain in the Peninsula, which was not the case at all. Urban legends say that absolutely nobody in the committee that decided it had any idea about how trains work. Probably it was a protectionist measure to benefit local manufacturers.
- mbroncano 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_legend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_legend Probably more to do with the fact that the first train in Spain was build in Cuba
- Maken 1y agoBut the trains in Cuba used standard gauge. And the early trains in the north of Spain used (and still use) a narrow-gauge. It was when the central government decided to build a nation-wide network that the Iberian-gauge was chosen, making it incompatible with both the pre-existing Spanish railways and other continental European railways, in the infamous "Informe Subercase" [1]. It is the perfect example of design-by-committee, in which no technical reasons are given other than there are wider and narrower gauges, so they choose an arbitrary middle ground. bast copy of the Subercase report I could find: [1] https://www.agrupament.cat/documents/Informe%20Subercase.pdf https://www.agrupament.cat/documents/Informe%20Subercase.pdf