In 1827, Horatio Allen, the chief engineer of the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company, prescribed the usage of gauge and many other railroads in Southern United States adopted this gauge.
The first railway built in Russia was built in 1837 to gauge for a 17 km long "experimental" line connecting the Imperial Palaces at Tsarskoye Selo and Pavlovsk; the choice of gauge was influence by Brunel's Great Western Railway which used .