WI: Russia Adopts Standard Gauge

kernals12

Banned
In most parts of the world, railroad tracks have a gauge of 1435 mm, or where I come from, 4 ft 8 1/2 inches. This is the standard gauge, first adopted in Britain and now used by 55% of the world's track mileage. But that leaves 45% not using this standard
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And as you can see in the dark purple on this map, a large chunk of that 45% is Russia and the many countries that were once ruled by it. They use a 1520 millimeter gauge, or 5 feet, appropriately called "Russian Gauge".

The lack of a standard gauge meant that the Russian Empire was isolated from Europe's rails and was a barrier to trade.
On the plus side, it meant that any invaders could not use their trains on Russia's tracks. Although that advantage is null since retreating troops can just tear apart the rails as they withdraw.

So what happens if Russia goes for standard gauge?
 
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Mine railroads.


Only partly true, and of very recent construction in Western Australia, & Queensland.

The original differing gauges came from the colonies of Victoria & South Australia, having Irish engineers, who built to the Irish 5' 3" broad gauge, while New South Wales English engineers built to the old two Roman chariot horses asses width, commonly known as standard gauge 4' 81/2".

Further separation then occurred when W.A., S.A., & Qld, started pushing into outback, particularly desert area, where load was light, and construction costs high. This led to the adoption of various narrow gauges, as they were cheaper to build.

Some area also went for metre gauge, or narrower, to access mountain farming areas, e.g. The now "Puffing Billy" tourist railway, in Victoria.

The classic example of this is that during WW11, it took two months to move a US Division from Melbourne to Townsville, as everything had to be tra shipped over three different gauges.

There's a whole other story of recent gauge standardisation, but that's probably for another thread.
 
The fairly obvious result would be a much better supply situation for the Germans in both of the World Wars, however I wonder what butterflies we would see before then
 
Different gauge is one thing, the other is the fact, that Russian Empire deliberately left border regions with few railroads (for the same purpose-to prevent invaders from using it). 1914 Russian border is still well visible if you look at the map of railoads in Poland-density of railroads is way smaller in former Russian Poland than in former Austrian and Prussian part. During CP occupation of Congress Poland Austrians and Germans had to build lots of new railroads there and they did it at pace never seen during Russian rule. Does that policy change too, so western provinces of Russian Empire had denser railroad network?
 

kernals12

Banned
Different gauge is one thing, the other is the fact, that Russian Empire deliberately left border regions with few railroads (for the same purpose-to prevent invaders from using it). 1914 Russian border is still well visible if you look at the map of railoads in Poland-density of railroads is way smaller in former Russian Poland than in former Austrian and Prussian part. During CP occupation of Congress Poland Austrians and Germans had to build lots of new railroads there and they did it at pace never seen during Russian rule. Does that policy change too, so western provinces of Russian Empire had denser railroad network?
Hopefully it would.
 
Different gauge is one thing, the other is the fact, that Russian Empire deliberately left border regions with few railroads (for the same purpose-to prevent invaders from using it). 1914 Russian border is still well visible if you look at the map of railoads in Poland-density of railroads is way smaller in former Russian Poland than in former Austrian and Prussian part. During CP occupation of Congress Poland Austrians and Germans had to build lots of new railroads there and they did it at pace never seen during Russian rule. Does that policy change too, so western provinces of Russian Empire had denser railroad network?
Highly unlikely, as Russian government will have to be even more paranoid about their roads being used by invaders TTL.
 
Highly unlikely, as Russian government will have to be even more paranoid about their roads being used by invaders TTL.

I’m not sure up to which degree this was a reason because construction of the railroads in Russia had been dictated mostly by the commercial considerations rather than possibility of a foreign invasion (the very thought of which was almost a taboo) or even a need of transporting the troops to the border in the case of war (which was OK). You can trace the same pattern on the East: the last segment of the Trans-Siberian RR had been completed in 1916 but Eastern-China RR was completed in 1903 because “Manchuria party” headed by Witte considered it as an opportunity to get to the new markets (and, indeed, this RR was bringing few millions gold rubles of profit annually; of course, there were unintended consequences like war with Japan).

AFAIK, the issue of the strategic railroads leading to the Western border had been discussed but their obvious unprofitability at the time of peace was a serious handicap to the implementation.

Not that difference of the gauge proved to be such a big problem during WWI or WWII (in both directions): the trains had been crossing borders at peace time and switching to a different gauge was a trivial procedure.
 
Russian trains were bigger and carried more fuel as distances were longer, that was part of the reason...
 
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