Further reading:

• The source that Wikipedia uses

• Another article from Discovery Park Of America

Why did they decide on nearly-standard gauge (4' 9") instead of standard gauge (4' 8.5")? Much of the American South's rail traffic connected to the Pennsylvania Railroad, which was still using their own 4' 9" gauge. It was deemed close enough, and the South's rail lines were gradually adjusted to true standard gauge over time through regular track maintenance. Cool stuff!

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.

Yup if only apple would see this...

> Over a period of 36 hours, tens of thousands of workers pulled the spikes from the west rail of all the broad gauge lines in the South, moved them 3 in (76 mm) east and spiked them back in place.[6] The new gauge was close enough that standard gauge equipment could run on it without problem. By June 1886, all major railroads in North America, an estimated 11,500 miles (18,500 km), were using approximately the same gauge. To facilitate the change, the inside spikes had been hammered into place at the new gauge in advance of the change.

The modern South: WHY DO WE HAVE TO CHANGE JUST FOR YOU DAMN YANKEES, YOU JUST WANT TO ERASE OUR HERITAGE OF FRUSTRATING RAILWAY ENGINEERS BECAUSE YOURE ALL GAY COMMUNIST DEEP STATE SPIES

This just makes me wanna play RDR2

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Electric diesel vs steam

That's why train drivers are called engineers

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?

Ah the things we could do when we were a great nation! The buildings! The bridges! The industry! We are but a shadow of our forefathers! Tear down their statues. I can't bear the sight. To remember is too painful...

And this song plays while we fix the tracks

https://youtu.be/Y5VJnxDLaZY

Probably the same reason power outlets are so different everywhere

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.

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.

Honestly the maps surprises me.

I'd think the rail gauges for China and Russia would be the same given how they've been increasing trade between the country for a while now. I think there was even a major railway completed not too long ago from Machuria to Russia.

The north- because you are stupid and do shit like enslave people and start wars when someone tries to take your slaves.

The things we can accomplish without pesky labor rules.

Y'ALL ARE JUST REVERSE RACISTS, YOU ONLY WANNA MAKE MY RAILROADS TAKE HORMONE BLOCKERS AND CUT OFF MY TRAIN'S DINGDONG BECAUSE YOU'RE AFRAID OF THE SUPERIOR WHITE RACE

China amd Russia actually have different rail gauges - 1435mm vs 1524mm

China's first trains were a gift from Britain, the origin of Standard Gauge, and so China's railways were presumably built to fit the imported British trains.

Russia shared no railway commerce with Britain so no necessity to fit British trains. Urban legend states that Russia's gauge is different intentionally in order to prevent foreign trains from running on their tracks, thereby helping thwart invasions. Whether that's true or not? Seems unlikely, but then it is Russia...

The enslaving bit was long before there was a united states .

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Can't tell if this is satire or not!

Nearly all the Southern lines in early 1886 were non-conforming as far as I can tell, so I don't see a significant distinction. The wiki mentions a couple big lines (the Illinois Central and the Mobile and Ohio Railroad) that converted to standard gauge a few months before the big switch, but I can't find anything else. If you can find a good source for the length of track that actually needed adjusting, that'd be an interesting addition.

Maybe, but the sentence you are relying on for the number isn’t scoped to the south but the entire continent.

“By June 1886, all major railroads in North America, an estimated 11,500 miles (18,500 km), were using approximately the same gauge“

It is a little unsatisfying that it doesn’t seem to say how much was moved.

That part of the wiki appears to be incorrect. 11,500-13,000 was the estimated length of southern railroads. The total length of track in the entire US in 1870 (16 years before) was already more than 45,000 miles, according to this blurb from the Library Of Congress website. The wiki article for rail transportation in the US puts it at 93,000 miles in 1880, but I can't view the source for that one.

> 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.

> and start wars when someone tries to take your slaves. you lose an election in which the winner explicitly said he wasn't going to abolish slavery.

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.

We’ll I’m going to write a letter to the manager of Wikipedia!

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

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...

Not if you're a unionised dock worker.

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.

How many times has that come up since WW2?

The link is for Build a lil house song from Red Dead Redemption 2 on YouTube

I might be wrong, but I imagine it would be reasonable easy to achieve. All they needed to do (presumably), was to move the existing rails to comply with the smaller gauge.

In today’s budget floundering world, we would still do this, but we would rip up the old tracks for scrap first, before relaying with new.

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

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

Their process was pretty neat. They decided that the western-most or northern-most rail was the one to be moved in, and left the other rail as-is. Workers hammered the new spikes ahead of time, three inches inward from the rail to be moved. On the big day, teams used a big caliper called a rail gauge (very creative) that spaced the rails to the exact width of the new gauge. After moving the rail, a few hits with the sledgehammer was all that was needed to put it into place. Then they slid the rail gauge to the next section of track and started the process again.

Yes, I thought they’d do it like this - very simple.

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.

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

>implying I wanted to save a click

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February 2022 would've been nice.

It's actually flirting.

Oh no, what are you doing, step-Dixie?

No, it's not. They're called engineers because they operate an engine car. The engine car is the car at the front or rear of the train that provides the motive force.

99999.99 apples?

Think it was a joke tbh

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.

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.

Broad rail gauges offer the advantage of higher speed and weight capacity. it made sense for Russia to establish a broad gauge due to it being a big country with a spread out population where speed was more important. I think that's also why the south had a bigger gauge since the south is more spread out.

And over here in Edinburgh we have been building a very small tram line through the city that's 8.7 miles long. It's been under construction now for 14 years counting.

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

“Almost standard gauge”?

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.

It would be a pain in the ass compared to the old days. You couldn't pre-spike because rail on wooden ties ride on tie plates, which you couldn't place until the old one is removed. Many sections of rail also use concrete ties, which have pre installed anchors for tie clips that secure the rail to the tie, meaning you would have to replace every concrete tie. Ribbon rail means you can't do small sections, youbhave to completely free the rail several yards ahead of your work and pull it over with machine assistance, instead of just picking up a 25ft section of jointed rail.

Also interesting is that it is ok if they are just a bit over standard gauge, but bad if they are under, so they erred on the too wide side.

Look at you here busting with your facts and stuff. Would it be known that I'm a doctor. I know certain things

I mean, you're not wrong, but China isn't exactly small... And China currently has the world's fastest train. South Africa uses tiny 3'6" tracks. Even the Japanese bullet trains use a standard 4'8" gauge somehow.

Britain did have the 'true' Broad Gauge railway network for GWR, being the good ol' 7'1/2", which didn't get adopted despite Britain being entirely dependent on the rail network back then. Things would've been a lot more comfortable if we'd gone the broad gauge route

If a country is a potential enemy, you don't want to have the same rail gauge because then an invading force can use your rail to move military supplies straight from home territory during an invasion.

Spain still runs (or at least the last time I was there) on a separate gauge from the rest of Europe, a holdover from wwii era.

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.

Uhhh the historical South wasn't really a huge fan of the North, either.

I covered that elsewhere in the thread. Kinda hard to fit everything in one succinct title!

> Why did they decide on nearly-standard gauge (4' 9") instead of standard gauge (4' 8.5")? Much of the American South's rail traffic connected to the Pennsylvania Railroad, which was still using their own 4' 9" gauge. It was deemed close enough, and the South's rail lines were gradually adjusted to true standard gauge over time through regular track maintenance. Cool stuff!

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No sick days back then either, I'll bet.

The American colonization really innovated slavery though with chattel slavery.

Your comment is as braindead as saying “well there’s always been people, I don’t see the issue”

Exactly my point…👍

No wonder major (and even relatively minor) construction projects are so time consuming and expensive.

I knew there'd be one of you here somewhere

Need to rebuild it and have bullet trains so us poor folk can travel. Airfare is killer and if you drive you lose vacation time. Weekend getaways are fun but not worth it for the airfare.

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.

Cornelius Vanderbilt, "Showtime"

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

Easier to do when all your rails are wrapped around trees.

I imagine there are lots of people who find the South obnoxious everywhere.

... you're joking, right?

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.

Eh some folks are cryptic when posting a link, others are paranoid about clicking said link.

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.

This excerpt would suggest OP's title is misleading. 11,500 is how many miles there were total, not how many the South switched in 36 hours.

yeah crossing the border on the transsiberian from China to Mongolia, they lift up the train cars and swap out wheels (bogies).

Bogies are swapped on trains pretty regularly:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nI467sc-Eo

Add the proven defense advantage in not having a common gauge, and no one is going to standardize rail.

that's the issue Ukraine has right now, Russia has been using their rail network to resupply.

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.

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.)

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.

Yeah, I'm assuming all former soviet bloc use the same gauge.

>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.

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.

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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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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Lol that’s nothing. Australia. Pffft.

Failed flexation

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From the source, it was started on May 31st 1886, so it should read "after just 36 hours" instead of "by June 1886"

I'm also a doctor.

I just call myself that because I fake documents and sell them to college kids

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Yes, I see now the article does a poor job of referencing the source.

The source claims in the South they were preparing to change 11,500 miles of track.

The article says all the track in North America, 11,500 miles, was on the new gauge.

Clearly, unless all the track in North America was located in the South, one of these is wrong.

Containers are already more or less standard outside of length

>In the fifteenth century, Portugal became the first European nation to take significant part in African slave trading. In 1580, the Spanish broke up the Portuguese slave trade monopoly by offering direct slave trading contracts to other European merchants. Known as the asiento system, the Dutch took advantage of these contracts to compete with the Portuguese and Spanish for direct access to African slave trading, and the British and French eventually followed. By the eighteenth century, when the trans-Atlantic slave trade reached its trafficking peak, the British (followed by the French and Portuguese) had become the largest carriers of enslaved Africans across the Atlantic. The overwhelming majority of enslaved Africans went to plantations in Brazil and the Caribbean, and a smaller percentage went to North America and other parts of South and Central America.

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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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.

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

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.

Austria Hungary during ww1.

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

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

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.

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.

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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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.

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.

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.

Them damn southern democrats 👀

And I thought Toronto’s Eglinton line was a disaster.

Super cool seeing an article mentioned from the Discovery Park of America. I live 45 minutes from there!

I agree more trains would be better. But whether trains are more economical than planes largely depends on the country. In the UK at least flying can be a lot cheaper. London to Paris flight is £30 but the train is £60. The train is much handier though as it goes from central and you don't need to get to the airport or hang around the airport for ages.

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.

What does this have to do with labor rules?

You think late 19th century rail workers were treated well? We can't even agree to give them sick days now.

I'm not saying they were treated well, I'm wondering what your point is.

I will point out that labor conditions in the 1880s in the south were a hell of a lot better than they were in the 1850s, yet the south didn't change their rail gauge then despite their massive number of slaves. I don't think labor rules were what made moving the rail gauge then and not before happen. I doubt labor rules today would prevent moving a rail gauge either.

If you get rid of labor rules, you can accomplish a lot. China is slapping together hospitals in a month. Qatar put together a series of World Cup stadiums and hotels in a decade. We don't do that sort of thing in the US anymore, because there's a cost that's being hidden.

A plane ticket for us to go to Vegas for the weekend is around 500$ per person. Airfare in The United States sucks.

The cost preventing the US from building infrastructure the way China does is a lot more than just labor rules. Our salaries are like 10x higher (to compete with other industry in the US, not because of regulation), environmental laws exist, and land rights are constantly an issue that people sue over for example. The ability to treat your employees like shit won't change those things.

All those things are interrelated.

>The article says all the track in North America, 11,500 miles, was on the new gauge.

I couldn't find any references with a quick minute of Google fu, so let's assume a five person team could reposition 1 mile of track in an hour. They were moving just one side, so doesn't seem unreasonable given 1886 tools.

That would mean 320 five person teams, 1600 people working 36 hours straight. So, again, surprisingly not unreasonable.

I thought this would help me figure out which source was wrong, but now I still don't know.

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.

>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.

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.

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?

that is incredible fascinating

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.

Jeez, much worse that I imagined.

2022: need to repave 5 miles of highway. 2 years later: we’re about half way done.

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.

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.

4ft 9in is from the Roman times and their road builders. It's the distance between 2 horses assholes. Aka the wheels on the carts. That's why you always take pictures of your friends standing on the railroad tracks balancing on the rails.

Anyone who knows anything knows that the Democratic Party basically did a political 180 over the middle of the 20th century and that's why the majority of the South now votes Republican

Go back to /pol/ mouthbreather

The historical South was still fresh from a good old-fashioned stomp-n-burn. They probably still jumped at the name Sherman until the 50s.

Wut

Conjecture, only 1 Dixiecrat ever jumped ship to the Republican Party, Strom Thurmond.

Yes, then every Southern voter followed suit.

Nobody drags out a civil engineering project like us Brits! Budget? What’s that?