The Birth of California Narrow Gauge: A Regional Study of the Technology of Thomas and Martin Carter (review)

One fascinating episode in the history of railroads is the battle of the gauges waged in Britain in the 1830s and 1840s, with the standard gauge of 4 feet 8¹/2 inches emerging victorious against Isambard Kingdom Brunel's massive 7-foot gauge. In the United States the quest for standardization took far longer and was much more complicated, especially in the South, where diverse gauges and lack of interchangeability between railroad cars proved a logistical nightmare for the Confederacy. But in the early 1870s, ironically, when standard-gauge tracks seemed likely to prevail over several different broad gauges in the United States, advocates of narrow-gauge common carriers sent the technological debate in a new direction.

Narrow-gauge lines (most of those in the United States measured three feet between the rails) represented more than a passing fad. The technology had genuine appeal to railroaders seeking to extend lines through mountainous terrain in which standard-gauge track would be ruinously expensive or to construct low-cost connections, as Salinas Valley wheat farmers did when they extended a narrow-gauge line to tidewater at Monterey to undercut the Southern Pacific/Central Pacific rail monopoly. Another of Stanford University Press's substantial books—George Hilton's magisterial American Narrow-Gauge Railroads (1990)—exhaustively chronicles this technology. Perhaps for that reason, Bruce MacGregor says relatively little about the gauge issue in general before plunging into his topic, a regional study of the construction and operation of narrow-gauge lines in California.

The main focus is on the activities of the brothers Thomas and Martin Carter, who built several California narrow-gauge lines and supplied a substantial portion of their rolling stock. MacGregor argues that their situation was unusual in that California's physical isolation from major car builders, located primarily on the Atlantic Coast, gave local entrepreneurs a chance to prosper within the niche market for narrow-gauge technology.

MacGregor's massive book seems to offer something for everyone, from railroad historians to model builders. In addition to the main text, it includes a wealth of illustrations—more than six hundred drawings and photographs—and sidebars on a wide variety of topics that strike MacGregor's fancy, everything from basic car anatomy to the making of a timetable. All of this information is nicely indexed. Yet, despite its wealth of detail, including a large number of historical maps, there are some surprisingly conspicuous omissions. Readers not familiar with California's geography and topography will yearn for at least one rail map of the entire state with the historical narrow-gauge lines properly located. The historical maps are a nice touch, but too often their details are not easy to read.

Students of technology will find much of value in this book, especially MacGregor's description of the narrow-gauge railroad support structure, such as the Carter brothers' fabricating shop, or the practice of often sending cars to purchasers in kit form. However, I suspect that most purchasers of this book will use it mainly as a reference tool. Model builders and preservation-minded rail aficionados, for example, will find numerous detailed drawings of freight and passenger cars. The Birth of California Narrow Gauge is physically too big a book to take to bed for leisurely enjoyment. Nonetheless, it is truly a book as beautiful as it is comprehensive, and the author and publisher deserve praise for the impressive result of their collaboration.