Better prepared CSA?

[Saphroneth]

Quality - certainly. Quantity though, quantity is the vital determinant. (And part of me wanted to get the thread back onto the question and off of, ah, "sociological" concerns.)

I think it's a lot easier to expand production of something you can already do than to create the ability out of whole cloth - as a few examples of how it could work out well for the CSA:

1) Better ironmongery production means they can produce 3" or 4" plate for the Virginia. (That makes her essentially invulnerable to Union guns below the 15")
2) An extant capacity for high quality gunmetal means the Brooke rifles can be higher in quality and achieve a heavy-gun superiority over the Union.
3) Domestic rifle production for the CSA lets them arm larger forces in the critical period when rifles are the limiting factor (hence when the Union can't arm their own armies).

It's quite possible that many of these changes would not change the likely winner of the ACW - but they can make it at least a little more likely that the CSA wins. It'll always be an uphill battle for the CSA unless the Union pisses off a power with a major blue water navy (ie Britain/France) but every little bit of further capacity increases the chance for something to give way. (OTL the Union was clearly the favourite to win, in a TL where the CSA had equal production capacity then they'd be the favourites to hold out, somewhere between them is a point where the CSA position improves considerably due to a tipping point - perhaps they get the Virginia finished a week early and force a panicked evacuation of Washington?)

 

[Saphroneth]

Here's one - the standardization of track gauge is done in the South as well as (or instead of!) the North.

 

[Anaxagoras]

Here's one - the standardization of track gauge is done in the South as well as (or instead of!) the North.

That is a seemingly minor point, but one which would have been of considerable help to the Confederates. When you think about it, what the South achieved with its railroads during the course of the war was absolutely astonishing, considering what little they had to work with and especially their inability to manufacture new locomotives themselves. Had their tracks been on the same gauge, their logistics would have been improved by a significant margin.

 

[Saphroneth]

That is a seemingly minor point, but one which would have been of considerable help to the Confederates. When you think about it, what the South achieved with its railroads during the course of the war was absolutely astonishing, considering what little they had to work with and especially their inability to manufacture new locomotives themselves. Had their tracks been on the same gauge, their logistics would have been improved by a significant margin.

It's not even as if there's a lack of PoD - at Erie PA, for example, there was so much passive and active resistance to the standardization (precisely because it would take away jobs) that there was a minor "war". Someone even got shot (non-fatally).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Gauge_War
Escalate that major dispute to the point someone actually gets fatally shot, and you could see the standardization impetus move south.