My goodness, armor - if I had thought for one minute that the story was true i wouldn't have given it a moment's thought. And certainly would *not have posted it in this forum, where it would, very properly, have been panned as boring.
It is the sheer speciousness of the reasoning, the absolute effrontery of whoever promulgated it in making such an elegant attempt to fool people, that attracts me.

Incidentally, there was no attempt at standardisation of British railway gauges until 1846 and, even then, the Great Western Railway continued to use the broad gauge until 1896.