ABSTRACT
It is worth noting that while the gauge adopted for most railways in Japan (hereafter referred to as conventional lines) was narrower than the ‘standard’, the loading gauge, which takes account of how big the locomotives and carriages can be, is greater than most ‘standard’ gauge railways. For this reason, trains on conventional lines in Japan are often wider than British trains, for example, which run on a ‘standard gauge’.6 The significance of the loading gauge will be addressed in further sections.
