Secondary railways: a review of effectiveness in two states

General railway specifications ensure safe and effective operations on ‘main routes’. However, there are ‘secondary routes’ that may gain by the use of railways but where it is not possible to afford to utilise ‘full specification’ railways and where the operational requirements may not need that level of provision. The states of Baroda (in British India) and Sachsen (in the German empire) were pioneer users of ‘lower specification’ secondary railways to help deliver the transport system that their decision-makers aspired to provide to help their development. A review of railway provision in the two states suggests that the use of secondary railways enabled a greater spread of provision than would have been possible with only ‘main route’ railways, at a slightly reduced service level. In terms of ‘outcome’, this helped to ensure that the two states matched the overall demographic growth across the respective empires within which they were included.