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kokopilau t1_iyiir6c wrote

If it was that easy, it's sad we have so many gauges around the World. Think of the savings and efficiency if there was a uniform gauge.

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firebat707 t1_iyj0z1o wrote

Strangely enough, differing railroad gauges might have saved the Soviet Union during WW2, the Nazis couldn't use rails to supply their troops once in Russia. Which forced supplies onto the awful road network, making the German advance that much slower.

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Favicool t1_iyjwx64 wrote

Couldn't they capture some Soviet trains from the area they occupied?

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firebat707 t1_iyjx84t wrote

Yes, if they could have gotten their hands on some, but the Soviets knew that and sabotaged all or most of the train engines in the line of German advance.

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ParsnipPizza2 t1_iyk51y3 wrote

The Soviets practiced a scorched earth policy. If it looked like an area was going to fall into German hands, EVERYTHING got destroyed.

There were no trains to capture because they were all blown up or farther east.

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LaoBa t1_iyk6qku wrote

Yes, they had counted on capturing much more Russian railway material.

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Nijajjuiy88 t1_iylfx4d wrote

Apart from the scortched earth policy, they did however capture a lot of rolling stock early in the war.

But the soviet engines required different octane fuel (I am not recalling whether it was diesel or petrol) than German trains. Also the fact that German coal couldnt be used for soviet trains for some reason. That made it difficult to keep them running.

Railway stations were few and far, so the trains running in USSR had to carry a lot of fuel for the journey.

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Careless_Bat2543 t1_iyltdvb wrote

In addition to what others have said (which is correct) that still means you have to unload every train and reload another at the point where they meet. In the days before the modern standard container that took a good amount of time. Additionally it means you had to run twice as many trains (meaning twice as many engineers, a lot more maintenance, separate production lines for parts etc.) it just made things a ton more difficult.

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QuietGanache t1_iyjymys wrote

The other frustrating aspect to Soviet railways was that Soviet trains were designed for much longer runs between replenishment, due to the vast empty spaces of parts of the USSR. This meant that, even if the supporting infrastructure could be captured, additional resupply stops would have to be added to keep German trains topped off.

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momentimori t1_iykm5cz wrote

It's same reason is why Ukraine wants to change their railway gauge.

Make it harder for Russia to bring supplies for their invasion in whilst making it easier to import munitions from the rest of Europe.

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Careless_Bat2543 t1_iyltjgb wrote

This is the case, though it should be noted that the soviets did not have a separate gauge for military purposes, but just because the Russian Empire decided that the wider gauge was better for because their country was so flat and the distances between cities so great. That it slowed down the Nazis was a happy accident.

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Vikkly t1_iyioi28 wrote

There are strategic purposes to having a different rail gauge from your neighboring country, but yeah, within the same country should be a no-brainer.

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Fishyinu t1_iyjaw55 wrote

How many times has that come up since WW2?

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Maswimelleu t1_iyk9a5v wrote

If Ukraine had switched to standard gauge after they gained their independence, they would have made Russian invasion quite a bit harder. Might have slowed down their advance and saved lives. Russians are totally dependent on railways for supply logistics and can barely function when they're forced to rely on roads only.

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Pjpjpjpjpj t1_iyky94k wrote

Russia use of railroads to bring troops and supplies into Georgia, Chechnya, Ukraine.

Soviet operations to maintain control of its soviet republics during independence movements (eg Hungary in the 50s).

Challenges with supplying Ukraine currently due to rail standards. Also challenges with exporting grain by land from Ukraine. All giving Russia an advantage.

Lack of a rail connection between Iran and Iraq during their war.

India and Pakistan rail connections during the split and their conflicts.

Lack of interconnecting rail slowing resupply of Vietnam and Cambodia. Differing rail gauges slowing train movement between some Northern Vietnam systems and the south and to certain cities (meter gauge, standard gauge, mixed gauge). Vietnam’s biggest lines used a different gauge than lines running to China.

Hell, even within China affected their various revolutions after WWII.

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Nijajjuiy88 t1_iylfyqb wrote

Austria Hungary during ww1.

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Vikkly t1_iymj6tb wrote

That really showed me how backward that empire was- their whole military strategy was that Germany would fight on their side and yet they didn’t think to use the same gauge? Logistics much?

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Nijajjuiy88 t1_iymm7yv wrote

Not just that, part of their country ran on different gauge, there were like 3 gauges iirc. Also the speed was limited to 10 km/h (lol a cycle is better) in order to avoid bottlenecks.

When they took their troops from Serbia and tried to move them to Galicia or something they nearly went around the country at this speed. Icing on the cake was that Austria declared to Germany that these troops were already present.

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Vikkly t1_iymmjlv wrote

Jeez, much worse that I imagined.

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villevalla t1_iyinhnb wrote

There actually wouldn't be a lot saving, that's why gauges aren't unified. Where is the saving if, for example, Finland and Japan were to use the same gauge? Or Mexico and Turkey? Or Russia and Eswatini?

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InfernalCorg t1_iyj0e6s wrote

> Where is the saving if, for example, Finland and Japan were to use the same gauge?

You can build the same model of train for both. Yes, it's not a huge issue, but standardization is generally a better than the alternative in industrial fields.

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PublicSeverance t1_iyj8s6p wrote

The same train model can still be sold anywhere.

It takes a few hours to 1/2 a day in order to change the wheels (bogies) on an entire train and all the carriages.

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CyborgElephant t1_iyjdces wrote

Or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_gauge

But maybe that doesn’t allow the adjustment as dynamically as I’m thinking.

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beachedwhale1945 t1_iyjubbg wrote

Even if it does, that’s only viable if the train regularly has to go from one gauge to another. If you sent a train from the US to Brazil, its better to completely change out the bogies than to have a system you don’t need that could fail and cause a crash and thus must be maintained.

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ibw0trr t1_iykerhg wrote

>If you sent a train from the US to Brazil, its better to completely change out the bogies

Or... You could containerize things into standard 40' long boxes and transload them to another train or to a big boat.

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beachedwhale1945 t1_iymisw4 wrote

The question was about moving the train itself, not the cargo said train may be carrying. For my part in this discussion, the train could be empty or loaded to the brim. In my head I was thinking the engine/cars were cargo on a ship and unloading them via a crane in some port like Rio for use on the Brazilian rail system.

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CyborgElephant t1_iyjustj wrote

Did you downvote me? I don’t know anything about trains. In my head I wondered if they had this, and they do. The solution exists, so not sure why it would be “a system you don’t need”, and why it would fail. If any train can go on any track, dynamically, then the size of the tracks don’t matter.

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beachedwhale1945 t1_iymiddw wrote

>Did you downvote me?

I generally don't downvote anyone except in extremely rare circumstances. Not considering maintenance or why universal solutions are not needed in all cases are commonplace and not worth my downvote. I use these as teaching points, encouraging you to think about something in a different way.

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InfernalCorg t1_iyjeu3b wrote

Of course, but surely economy of scale means it's cheaper to make 70 bogey model As than 40 As and 30 Bs?

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nivlark t1_iylm8ks wrote

If there were only one bogie manufacturer in the world, yes. But in practice the demand for rail vehicles is high enough that countries with different gauge standards can support independent rolling stock industries.

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nokangarooinaustria t1_iymfqg0 wrote

Add one or two zeros to those numbers and you are onto something.

The problem here is that trains are expensive and big and reasonably complicated - the differences the change of the wheels makes isn't much compared to the rest of the cost.

And changing all rails in your country most of the times is prohibitively expensive. The cost savings would probably never reach the initial cost of the change.

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bobtehpanda t1_iyl7fo7 wrote

The thing is that the markets for the various gauges are so large that they effectively are able to use standards as well.

In the same vein there being a handful of plug socket shapes doesn’t significantly increase the cost of goods using electricity.

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DownwindLegday t1_iyiqhyf wrote

Check this out.

There are plenty of countries with one gauge that border a country with a different gauge. They would benefit from having the same standard.

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seicar t1_iykd7ev wrote

Or not.

Take Finland for example. It is neither EU nor RU. Fins aren't anit-trade or specifically in love with a set distance between rails. Until recently this has been for a very real reason.

The country has been a fulcrum of neutrality between RU and Scandinavia/EU/NATO for approx. 90 years.

Now a lot of countries had some sort of authoritarian fascism within its population prior to WWII, but the Finns had to embrace Nazis to help hold off USSR. Stalin really really really wanted to put a big red mustache on that area.

After, (and during) if the Finns looked west, then USSR would see a real threat to their north sea ports as well as the major (and at some times capital) city of St. Petersburg. If the Fins went east, then the Baltic would be open for strikes into central EU and Scandinavia. To make a premature TLDR; the Finns were militarized like Israel, not because everyone wanted to kill them, rather they were the Uncle that had an old house in the middle of NYC central park. A desirable location.

Keeping all the outside countries off of major logistical infrastructure is a big positive.

AND... Fin/Swede entering NATO is a big big deal as a consequence of the Ukrainian invasion.

RU, China, East African countries, Central American countries, India, etc. might be a bit smart to make things a bit difficult.

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pviitane t1_iynqc6n wrote

Well, actually. Finland has the same gauge as Russia. You see, during the early heydays of rail building, Finland was part of Russian Empire and the building started on the orders of Russian emperor/czar.

Before the Russian invasion, there has been a daily passenger rail connection from Helsinki to St Petersburg and Moscow. There are at least couple of border crossing points where Finnish and Russian rail networks connect so this has surely been taken into account in military defense planning.

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V6Ga t1_iykcupk wrote

They would lose defense advantage in having dissimilar gauges.

As noted the Nazis were stopped, in part, by the not being able to use trains in Russia.

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lawnerdcanada t1_iyki2ak wrote

Given, for instance, the Russian military's depenence on rail for logistics, threre is, for some countries, real advantage in not sharing a rail gauge with a neighbour.

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Bierbart12 t1_iyioctf wrote

Probably the same reason power outlets are so different everywhere

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Doggydog123579 t1_iyj59ic wrote

Atleqst for the UK, the outlets are diffrent because ring circuits are an abomination.

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ibw0trr t1_iykey35 wrote

I had never heard of this until tech connections did a bit on outlets.

Ring circuits seem like a great idea... Until one end gets broken and the other has to support the full potential amperage.

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nivlark t1_iylltpr wrote

They were always just an efficiency measure. Ring mains let you use less copper, which was in short supply in the UK during the post-war years when a lot of housing was being built to replace what had been lost to bombing.

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katycake t1_iyli9mb wrote

Yes but, one of these power outlet designs, have got to be the superior one, and not just 'interchangeably good enough'.

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Bierbart12 t1_iylivki wrote

Of course. That'd be the plug type F(used in most of Europe, Jordan, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Turkey, Uruguay and Vietnam) that is just two prongs which are always grounded, can be inserted both ways and don't allow flow unless they are fully in the socket, preventing almost all accidents

I don't know enough about other sockets to compare them, but the american one(Plugs A and B) has a funny face and is only sometimes grounded(Type B), which is a bad idea for consumers

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Latexi95 t1_iyj5lib wrote

We would happily switch to more standard European gauge here in Finland, if EU would pay for it. Mostly issue is money and lack of need to change. We have train lines to Sweden, which require switching trains on border, but they aren't that hugely popular and important as Lapland has fairly low population density. Only direction that normally has really much need for trains is to Russia, which has "close enough" gauge that suitable trains can work with both rails.

It is hard to sell the changing of gauge politically when the benefits are so small. EU has some ideas about unified train network, and they aren't keen to give money for building for "wrong" gauge, but I doubt they would pay us to change the gauge and trains to European standard...

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boysan98 t1_iyk8w2q wrote

Japan specifically had a narrower gauge built originally to cope with the mountainous terrain. You trade capacity for agility. At leas that’s the justification the British used when they designed it for them.

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V6Ga t1_iykd36q wrote

Do you know how the gauge helps with terrain?

(Japan might be the only industrial nation that has no need to standardize train gauge with another country, being an island nation.)

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nivlark t1_iyllk4s wrote

It's just cheaper. Smaller gauge means smaller earthworks, bridges, tunnels etc.

Mountainous regions of Europe (Switzerland, southern France, the Basque country) also have narrow gauge networks that operate alongside more extensive standard gauge networks.

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ScoobiusMaximus t1_iym4roj wrote

For those examples sure, there wouldn't be that much direct savings. But if you pick countries that actually have a land border instead of purposefully stupid examples then it facilitates rail transit between those countries a lot more easily.

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Mr_Happy_80 t1_iyje76b wrote

It doesn't really matter. Setting up trains for other gauges isn't hard, as there were plenty of old BREL locomotives sold to Eastern Europe and Asia converted to 3ft or 2.5ft gauges.

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LNMagic t1_iyl9lgw wrote

There are a few other reasons we don't drive trains across oceans.

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raytaylor t1_iylpepp wrote

Since containerization I dont think this is much of a problem now. But I can see from a passenger comfort aspect that wider gauges are better.

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VeryJoyfulHeart59 t1_iyn1sah wrote

This TIL is so interesting. I had always assumed railways were standard all over there world because of this story I had heard back in the '80s.

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