The day they changed the gauge of all Southern railroads:
Though things were more efficient after the change of gauge, the railroads kept the savings.
That, in point of fact was one of the reasons why people in the early-mid 20th Century greeted the laying of highways with open arms. In the Plains states, where there usually was only one railroad serving an area, the pricing for both passengers and freight would, these days, be viewed as predatory. Few looked upon the subsequent collapse of local rail service with anything other than quiet satisfaction.
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2 comments:
I hadn't heard that, and 36 hours is incredibly fast.
IIRC, Stalin kept the USSR railroad gauge different from western Europe's to make invasion harder. Or so I've heard.
The way I heard it, one of the Czars, Nicholas I, started it off and it was to prevent rolling stock (cars and engines) from leaving the country. Or you could believe the OTHER story, which was he told the engineers to make the gauge wider than the European standard by the width of his private parts, which dimension I will leave to the student to determine.
As to wartime railroad use, the first thing a retreating (or invading) force does is rip up the rails. Historically anyway.
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