In the UK when something passes you by It's said to have "Gone West"
The same expression in North America Produces the answer "Gone South"
What I'd like to know is what the rest of the worlds localised expression is
Examples:Is Australia's "Gone North"? Japan/China "Gone East?"

Can you help?

From American Slang by RL Chapman (Harper & Row, 1987):

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go south v phr To disappear; fail by or as if by vanishing: He played unbelievably...then all of a sudden he just went south--Sports Illustrated/ publicly accused him of going south on me--Philadelphia Journal [probably fr the notion of disappearing south of the border, in particular the Mexican border, to escape legal pursuit and responsibility; probably reinforced by the widespread Native American belief that the soul after death journeys to the south, attested in American Colonial writing fr the mid-18th century]

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I have also heard it used in the sense of equipment failure or breakdown, such as "My internet connection has gone south,"

But that isn't the same as "when something passes you by." Perhaps "gone west" in the UK does not correspond to "gone south" in the US.

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I have also heard it used in the sense of equipment failure or breakdown, such as "My internet connection has gone south,"

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That's the same as the UK version substitute West for South!

I don't think they're related. To go south rarely means to disappear these days, but did mean that, with the etymology (crossing the Mexican border) that Professor gives. It more often means to go downhill (keep in mind we see south as down).

To go west comes from thieves' slang for going to Tyburn gallows and be hanged.

I suspect that "going West" as used in Britain is older than the idea of the gallows at Tyburn (the "Tyburn tree" with its grisly fruit). For centuries nothing was known of what was out to the West, except that any mariner who ventured out that way did not return. Add to that associations with the setting sun (significant in pagan days) and perhaps of funeral boats being launched in that direction, and you have a powerful image of anything that goes West passing from human ken for all time.

I have no doubt that both the idea of the setting sun and the dangers of the open sea influenced the use of the phrase, but one would expect to be able to trace it earlier than the 19th century if that were the origin. Of course, the last execution at Tyburn took place in the late 18th century, so the case, based on dates anyway, for Tyburn is suspect as well. I should have given that as the most accepted origin, as I don't know that there is rock-hard evidence for any origin.

I wonder if anyone knows the reason for the reported surge of usage around WWI.

Could "going west" be associated with going backwards (for left-to-right readers)?

The surge of usage around WW1 is easy enough to attempt to explain. The front line was on the East. It follows that anyone badly injured would be taken to the West, behind the lines, rather than being treated then and there. Such injuries were often fatal; any case the man would, as likely as not be out of action and only fit for repatriation No doubt the dead were, from preference, removed way back behind the lines for burial.

It follows that anyone spoken of as having 'gone West' was out of action permanently, beyond immediate or useful repair.

'Gone West' anyway does not mean, necessarily finished, destroyed, of a a piece of machinery; it may mean only out of action. That's in contrast to the permanent end of a human at Tyburn.

This bit of etymology [c) FPuli 2004] is so neat that I wonder what evidence there is of the expression pre-dating WWI.It fits in with soldiers' speech. There is a lot of humour and understatement in that

The Tyburn explanation doesn't ring true to me. What did people to the West of Tyburn ( the modern Marble Arch, top of Park Lane, London ) in the villages of Chelsea, Fulham, Notting Hill, Kensington ,say?.Why indeed would anyone outside of London Town and City,think of Tyburn at all? Are we to understand that the expression is only found in London initially, but spread out over the whole country without the rest of us picking up the allusion but only the meaning, or rather 'a' meaning, not, I think the usual or universal one ?

The expression does fit, of course, with the matter of the West being unknown, with the Sun and so on, as above, but if you want a precise answer will the WWI one do? .

Well, we still finish stories with "sailed off into the sunset". We don't mean "dead", just "end of story" much like the "all lived happily ever after" of a children's story.

I couldn't find any reference for "going West", just one for "going South", quoting rather self-explanatory examples such as the Stock Market going South when the graphs all head for the floor. Apparently we have to blame some Greek fellow for drawing the first map with South at the bottom!

Here is Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (2001 edition) on 'Going West': " To die (of persons) ; to be lost; to become useless (of things ), as 'My chance of promotion has gone West'. The reference is to the setting sun, which 'goes west' and then sinks or expires."