<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Editorial_cartoon" class="extiw" title="w:Editorial cartoon">Political cartoon</a> depicting the evils of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/break_of_gauge" class="extiw" title="w:break of gauge">break of gauge</a> on the railway at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucester" class="extiw" title="w:Gloucester">Gloucester</a> in 1846. In historical hindsight it is known that the chaotic nature of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/transloading" class="extiw" title="w:transloading">transloading</a> at Gloucester in the 1840s was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/break_of_gauge#Overcoming_a_break_of_gauge" class="extiw" title="w:break of gauge">deliberately maximized</a> as a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/spectacle" class="extiw" title="w:spectacle">spectacle</a> to serve as a political weapon in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauge_War" class="extiw" title="w:Gauge War">Gauge War</a>, and that ways of mitigating it were available but were not implemented. Regardless, at the time such chaos was widely interpreted as an obvious lesson in the folly of allowing more than one gauge, and it had real impact on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/public_opinion" class="extiw" title="w:public opinion">public opinion</a>.
J. H. Townshend
Illustrated London News, June 6, 1846