Track gauge as a colonial decision

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Gauge is chosen once, early, usually to save money, and then cannot be changed without rebuilding everything. The Cape Colony adopted 1,067 mm in 1873 — narrower than standard, wider than the 762 mm some argued for — after its chief railway engineer opposed going narrower on the grounds that cheap construction would be paid back in expensive operation. The same 1,067 mm went to Australia's Central Australia Railway and much of southern Africa. Russia built at a broad gauge, which is why through carriages must be regauged at the Chinese and European frontiers to this day. Every luxury train in this Journey is riding a nineteenth-century capital-cost calculation it cannot revisit: the Blue Train and Rovos are Cape gauge because the Cape Colony was in a hurry in 1873.

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