The Railway Clauses Act authorised railway companies to use locomotive engines, carriages and wagons; to carry passengers and goods, and to make reasonable charges not exceeding the tolls authorised by their special Acts.  Since then the whole of the trade of transit by rail has been conducted by the companies owning the lines.

The gauge of railways in Great Britain was not fixed upon any scientific principle.  At first it followed the width of the coal tram-roads in the north of England, which was adopted simply on account of its practical convenience (five feet being the usual width of the gates through which the “way-leaves” led) and so four feet eight and a-half inches became the ordinary gauge, but in the early days it was by no means the universal gauge.  Five feet was chosen for the Eastern Counties Railway; seven feet for the Great Western and five feet six was used in Scotland.  The Ulster Company in Ireland made twenty-five miles of the line from Belfast to Dublin on a gauge of six feet two, while the Drogheda Company, which set out from Dublin to meet the Ulster line, adopted five feet two.  When the Ulster Company complained of this, the Irish Board of Works, it is said, admitted that it was a little awkward, but added that, as it was not likely the intervening part would ever be made, it did not much matter.  The subject was, I believe, in Ireland referred to a General Pasley, who consulted the authorities (who were many) throughout the kingdom.  He ultimately solved the question by adding up the various gauges the authorities favoured, and recommended the mean, which was five feet three inches; and so, for Ireland, five feet three became the standard gauge.

“The battle of the gauges,” as it was styled at the time, was lively and spirited.  Eventually it was decided by Parliament, which in the year 1846 passed the Railway Regulation (Gauge) Act.  This Act ordained that in Great Britain all future railways were to be constructed on a gauge of four feet eight and a-half inches, and in Ireland of five feet three inches, excepting only certain extensions of the broad gauge Great Western Railway.

Up to this time no action at common law was maintainable against a person who by his wrongful act, neglect or default caused the immediate death of another person, and an Act (known as Lord Campbell’s Act), “for compensating the Families of Persons Killed by Accidents,” became law.  This enactment was due principally to the railway accidents that occurred.  They were relatively more numerous than they are now, for the many modern appliances for ensuring safety had not then been introduced.  The Act provided that compensation would be for the benefit of wife, husband, parent and child of the person whose death shall have been caused.  The Act did not apply to Scotland.  Perhaps it was because the laws of the two countries differed more then than now, and the life of the railways in Scotland was young, England being well ahead.  Probably England thought she was doing enough when she legislated for herself by passing this Act.  It must be observed, however, that the Act applies to Ireland as well as England.