this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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I assume he’s referring to the same question I was asking: did you just extrapolate this from the phrase “fucked up, disastrous mess” (referring to the sheer number of different systems in Europe?), because I think the big long reply above seriously undersells the fact that “20th century conflicts” aren’t even mentioned or gestured at in the video. There’s a map showing…different countries…but while 20th century conflicts changed various borders in Europe, they aren’t the origin of the borders between countries in Europe, or the origin of different European countries developing their own independent rail systems without any centralised plan - because they’re different countries, and the various bodies which today unify much of the continent only began to come into existence after the Second World War.
If we were talking about Former Yugoslavia, you’d actually be right! The integrated rail infrastructure of that region was completely devastated by the 1990s. But that’s not the focus here.
@YouKnowWhoTheFuckIAM It goes back to the mid 19th century. In an era where battlefields were controlled by massed infantry with rifles, railways revolutionised the process of mobilizing for war—they who ran the tightest timetables got to the battlefields first. But as a result, frontiers moved around and the networks fractured. And shit like the Russian Empire deliberately choosing a different track gauge to stop German and Austrian troop trains running on their tracks during an invasion.
I still think that this represents a bias towards a military-geopolitical interpretation of history that’s not wholly sustainable, in spite of its appeal. In the Russian Empire case, I’m quite certain that that’s a popular myth, because I know that it is certainly the case that when the first railway infrastructures were being built, the political powers, administrators, and engineers responsible were as much influenced by technological and physical geographical imperatives as they were by geopolitical. The Russian Empire’s decision to use what would become the Russian gauge was multi-factoral - indeed looking it up, it appears that they were persuaded by Brunel’s own preference for a wide gauge, which was famously thwarted in the early development of the British railways.
Definitely this. There are few more persistent myths out there than the origin of various track gauges -- starting with the myth that standard gauge (1435mm) derives from the width of a horse's arse. Military planners weren't stupid enough to think that a break of gauge would present an insurmountable obstacle to an invading army (not least because they could just commandeer or seize rolling stock and march all their soldiers off one train and onto another), but instead relied on the obvious, reliable stuff like having plans to blow up bridges and tunnels to deny the enemy the use of the infrastructure. If a gauge is unusual like in Russia or Ireland the most likely cause is that it was a compromise between people who wanted broad gauge and people who wanted Stephenson gauge which resulted in the choice of some number inbetween the two. Russian gauge is a round 5', Irish gauge is 5'3", both round numbers in archaic units.
There are loads of weird things which essentially boil down to "someone made an arbitrary decision" - for instance, a lot of railways in Western European countries have left-hand running for no reason other than it was what George Stephenson used when he built the Liverpool & Manchester Railway and British practice was highly influential on the early development of railways on the continent.