A closer look
Before IKEA forced us to build our own bookshelves, Robert Hudson was out there letting corporations assemble their own rail networks. Sensing a boom in colonial and industrial expansion in the late 19th century, Hudson standardized narrow-gauge transport equipment. He sold prefabricated track sections, tipper wagons, and tiny locomotives that could be shipped anywhere in the world and bolted together by unskilled laborers. He essentially commercialized the "Lego set" model for global industrial rail transport, making heavy logistics cheap and terrifyingly easy to deploy.
