page_title: Cape Government Railways
section_title: Cape Gauge
hierarchical_section_title: Cape Government Railways / History / Cape Gauge
caption_attribution_description: English: Early map of the Cape Colony's Railway system as planned by Premier Molteno and completed in 1882. From Cape Colony Archives in Cape Town
context_page_description: The Cape Government Railways was the government-owned railway operator in the Cape Colony from 1874 until the creation of the South African Railways in 1910.
context_section_description: The first few rudimentary lines at Cape Town were built at dimensions close to  4 ft 8 ¹⁄₂ in (1,435 mm) standard gauge, the British Empire's standard. However their width, designed for England's landscape, made it impossible at the time to penetrate the mountains of the rugged southern African escarpment. Most of the sub-continent was effectively landlocked. In 1871 Molteno had written to the British Governor of the Cape Henry Barkly about the gauge which was used to penetrate the mountainous terrain near Trieste in modern Italy, believing it would work in crossing the South African mountains. A narrower gauge enabled tighter turns and traversing steeper terrain. When the first elected Cape government took power the next year, its select committee set the gauge for all new railways at 3’-6”. The use of a dual system was briefly kept, to ease the transition for the existing wider lines, but in only a few months the government standardised all railway development on what became known as the "Cape Gauge" of 3 ft 6 in (1,067 mm).
  Although it was first meant just to ease construction of railways through mountainous terrain, this gauge later went on to become the standard for all railways in southern and central Africa.
caption: 1882 map showing the three principal rail networks of the Cape Colony
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