Was Britain at a disadvantage being the first country to introduce railways?

[Dyncymraeg]

Britain was the first country to introduce railways. Did Britain make errors in developing the railway as there were no examples to follow and did other countries learn from Britain and avoided any mistakes Britain made.

 

[Railsigns]

Britain was the first country to introduce railways. Did Britain make errors in developing the railway as there were no examples to follow and did other countries learn from Britain and avoided any mistakes Britain made [?]

It's why Britain's railways are lumbered with a small loading gauge.

 

[Irascible]

Quite possibly why the world is lumbered with the current standard gauge too ( note how many 5'+ gauge lines British engineers built abroad! ). Railways aren't the only place we got to make all the beginner's mistakes in either.

But, someone had to be first, no reason someone else wouldn't have made the same mistakes.

 

[Chester1]

Quite possibly why the world is lumbered with the current standard gauge too ( note how many 5'+ gauge lines British engineers built abroad! ). Railways aren't the only place we got to make all the beginner's mistakes in either.

But, someone had to be first, no reason someone else wouldn't have made the same mistakes.

We can't take development of the railways outside of the UK being first to industrialise because their development was part of it. Being the first country to industrialise gave the UK the foundations of the wealth we live on today. Slightly before the railway era it enabled the UK to fund 23 years of war that eventually prevented France from dominating Europe after the French revolution. The UK rail network would probably be smaller if we hadn't led its initial development because there were limits on the resources required to build the network.

 

[Titfield]

In any development or advance there are first mover advantages and disadvantages.

 

[Lucan]

Did Britain make errors in developing the railway as there were no examples to follow

Unfortunately there were examples for the first public railways (such as the Liverpool & Manchester) to follow : the industrial wagonways. George Stephenson, bless him, adopted the track gauge to suit the typical colliery wagons of the time, and the loading gauge to suit a typical road carriage. I guess he saw an economy of employing existing wagon and carriage builders to manufacture railway rolling stock. There was also still a vestage of the mind set from the collieries with wooden plank tracks, and plateways such as the horse-drawn Surrey Iron Railway, that railways could and should accept wagons straight off the road - early bi-modal.

Also unfortunate was Brunel's choice of an extreme opposite wide gauge, which did cause problems on tighter curves. I think that if Brunel had gone for something like 5'6" or even 6 ft there would have been a chance of it winning the gauge war. Even Stephenson admitted in later life that he wished he had chosen something "a little more", probably thinking of 5 ft.