Favicool t1_iyjwx64 wrote
Reply to comment by firebat707 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
Couldn't they capture some Soviet trains from the area they occupied?
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.
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.
LaoBa t1_iyk6qku wrote
Yes, they had counted on capturing much more Russian railway material.
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.
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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