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firebat707 t1_iyj0z1o wrote

Reply to comment by kokopilau in TIL that the southern United States converted all 11,500+ miles of its railroads from broad gauge (5 ft/1.524 m) to nearly-standard gauge (4 ft 9 in/​1.448 m) in just 36 hours, starting on May 31, 1886 by 1859

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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