Advantages
Narrow gauges tend to be associated with smaller loading gauges and sharper curves, which tend to reduce initial capital costs. This offsets the costs of any traffic affected by the break-of-gauge.
An advantage is that invading armies may be severely hampered (as when Germany invaded the USSR in WWII). However this break of gauge came about more by accident than design as the American consulting engineers were merely introducing the gauge commonly found in the southern United States.
Another advantage might be that if the different gauges have different loading gauges, the break-of-gauge helps prevent the larger wagons straying onto lines with smaller tunnels.
Similarly, if the larger and smaller gauges use different couplers, the break of gauge tends to keep the different couplers separate.
Read more about this topic: Break-of-gauge
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