In railway transport, the width of the rails is the distance covering the inner edges of the rail heads. Due to some reasons, rail sizes differ between countries. This situation creates difficulties in railway transportation. Some changes are made to avoid those difficulties:
- Transfer of the transported load from a wagon of one width of the road to another wagon of the width of the road.
- Replacement of intermediate angles of wagons with carriages considered suitable for road traffic of specified width.
- To take advantage of technological means for automatically changing the width of the rail.
Due to the differences in distance between the lines, neighboring railways of different widths or combined railway lines of different widths are placed at junction points of tens of kilometers in both directions.
Railway Track Gauge
Wide track gauge
Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, northern Afghanistan – 1520 mm
Standard gauge
Turkey and European countries (the most common track size in the world) – 1435 mm.
China, Iran, South Korea – 1435 mm
Maximum track size
India, Pakistan – 1676 mm