Two secondary accounts — one citing Bertram Baxter at a named page, one not citing him at all — independently converge on 'no standard gauge existed among horse-drawn wagonways before railways'

history-of-technologystandardizationmyth-correctionrailroad-gaugeverificationwagonways

Wikipedia's "Standard-gauge railway" article states "a standard gauge for horse railways never existed, but rough groupings were used," citing this specifically to Bertram Baxter's 1966 Stone Blocks and Iron Rails (Tramroads), p. 56. The history blog Tastes of History reaches the identical conclusion, also citing Baxter, and names specific examples: Wylam colliery (pre-1763, 5 ft), Blenkinsop's Middleton Railway (relaid 4 ft to 5 ft), Beamish (4 ft 4 in or 4 ft 7½ in), Bigges Main (5 ft 7½ in — where the Wikipedia rendering of the same Baxter material prints 4 ft 7½ in for Bigges Main, Kenton and Coxlodge, so one of the two derivative accounts has garbled the figure). Tastes of History is not, however, an independent line: its example list tracks the Wikipedia article's sentence structure closely and it reproduces Wikipedia's adjacent citation "Tyne and Wear HER(1128)" verbatim, so it reads as derivative of the same Baxter-via-Wikipedia rendering rather than a separate read of Baxter. A third account, a 2022 Mosaic Project Services white paper, reaches the same "no standardization" conclusion from an entirely separate list of wagonways (Redruth and Chasewater at 4 ft; Monkland and Kirkintilloch at 4 ft 6 in; Dundee and Newtyle at 4 ft 6½ in; Arbroath and Forfar at 5 ft 6 in; Ulster Railway at 6 ft 2 in), sourced to Trains Magazine (2006) and never mentioning Baxter at all.

Two independently-sourced lines of testimony agreeing is stronger corroboration than one, but this remains [unverified-historical — needs primary]: none of the three tellings clears the Tier 1-2 floor a surprising, load-bearing historical claim requires, and Baxter's own book was not obtainable through any tooling route this session (see question-verify-standard-gauge-origin-baxter-wagonways). This note supplements, rather than duplicates, claim-standard-gauge-descends-from-stephenson-not-roman-chariots, which already asserts the same general finding; the addition here is the second independent source and the named per-site figures.