The trains that go between Russia and Finland are 1522mm iirc to split the difference
Edit: it’s just the Allegro that is 1522mm as a kind commenter pointed out below.
t h i c c Irish railways
I went from Moscow to Warsaw by rail once. They change the axes at the Belarus/Poland border, which takes about 3-4 hours, no big deal.
Iberia is different from France so the French couldn’t invade Spain.
Amazed that island of Ireland is different to Great Britain, railways had existed for almost a century by the time Ireland achieved independence.
Thought the railway gauge used in Graubünden (Switzerland) for the Rhätische Bahn was way smaller than the standard size? Because of the small space for rail tracks in the mountains
Brunel pushed for a 2140 mm gauge to be used across the UK to allow for a smoother ride, greater capacity and higher speeds. It would’ve required extensive rebuilding across the country and a lot more land use devoted to future rail infrastructure. But it makes for an interesting “what-if”.
I can now die in peace
On top of this oddity, the trams in Helsinki are 1000mm but the ones in Tampere are 1435mm.
I learned a fun, random bit of trivia last week while researching horse-drawn trams. The distance between tram/train rails is 1435 mm (at least in NL, and apparently throughout all of the green areas here) is based on the width of a horse’s ass, since a horse had to fit comfortably between the rails to be able to pull a tram. (Makes sense, since a lot of them were also down streets that had horse-drawn conveyances, but that’s not as much fun.)
Next time you ride a train or tram, start thinking about horse butts because that’s why. I’m trying to find a good source in English.
Cyprus used to have a railway when it was a British colony. I assume they followed the standard gauge system.
It really triggers me that ALL railway gauges are these weird customary sizes instead of something metrically sensible like, say, 1.5 meters or 2 meters (for big boi trains).
If you spoilsports hadn’t stopped us, we’d now be running on 2000mm Reichstandardspurbreite tracks :/
I like this definition of eastern/western Europe.
I miss Jakub Marian’s blog and I hope that he is okay.
There’s a nice joke explaining how it came to be that the Russian gauge is wider. Unfortunately it’s not really translatable:
​
>Приходят инженеры к Николаю I и спрашивают:
>
>- В Европе ширина колеи 1435 миллиметров. Нам делать так же или шире?
>
>- Нахуй шире, – ответил император.
>
>Инженеры послушались и сделали в России ширину колеи 1524 миллиметра. Примерно на хуй шире.
​
The tzar has decided to build a railroad. He calls the engineers before him and tells them to get to work. The engineers ask:
– In Europe they set the rails apart by 1435 millimeters. Should we do the same or make the track wider?
– Nahui wider? – asked the Tzar. [Nahui = means “Why the f*ck”, but literally this expression is: “By a dick” / “On a dick”]
And so the engineers made the tracks 1524 mm wide, wider exactly by one dick.
Brunel should’ve won. Passenger rail has very different needs from industrial coal mine wagonways, and those are not reflected by standard gauge.
In Japan Most of the railway track are 1067(!)mm wide. But the Shinkansen track is 1435mm Standard gauge.
Iceland has no public trains and The Isle of Man does?
Brunel disapproves of your puny gauges. 7 feet or go home.
To be fair, Lithuania already uses 126 km of standard gauge (out of ~1900 km rail tracks) and till 2026 that number should be increased to more than 500 km (Rail Baltica from PL border to LV border is being built currently (via Kaunas and Panevezys)).
Even more construction is planned later – the two largest cities, Vilnius and Kaunas, would be connected using the standard gauge, and there [would be talks with EC about Kaunas – Klaipeda (port city) railway track funding](https://sumin.lrv.lt/en/news/marius-skuodis-vilnius-and-klaipeda-should-be-placed-on-the-trans-european-transport-network-map). That’s additional 600-700 km of standard gauge tracks (assuming doubled tracks of course) connecting the three largest cities in the country (i.e. half of the country’s population).
we are expecting rail baltica
The great western railway was orginally built with a guage of over 7ft. This was to make it more comfortable for passengers and allow wider goods to be accepted on that network. Unfortunately for brunel the rest of the UK adopted standard guage because it was cheaper to build (you need to flatten less land +narrower tunnels and bridges).
Within a year of brunels death the GWR was reguaged to standard guage.
Everyone point and laugh at iceland
Iceland: 😭
Iberia likes their trains thicc I guess 😳
Presumably the Brits built our railways, how did we end up with a different gauge to the U.K.?
Hitler in 1941-“I’m sure this won’t matter very much.”
What is this?? Some sort of gauge-measuring contest…
Finland: “… and four millimeters!”
Voltage however 😅😅😅
r/mapswithoutcaucasus
Rail Baltica will be standard 1435 mm gauge line through Baltics in addittion to 1520 mm soon. Btw, before World War II there already was 1435 mm line in addition to 1520 mm, so you could take train from Riga to Paris back then.
Also, if narrow gauges are mentioned in case of Isle of Man, Latvia also has one small 30 km public railway 750 mm narrow gauge line from Gulbene to Alūksne, with regular passenger trains.
41 comments
Rail Baltic will be 1,435 mm though.
The trains that go between Russia and Finland are 1522mm iirc to split the difference
Edit: it’s just the Allegro that is 1522mm as a kind commenter pointed out below.
t h i c c Irish railways
I went from Moscow to Warsaw by rail once. They change the axes at the Belarus/Poland border, which takes about 3-4 hours, no big deal.
Iberia is different from France so the French couldn’t invade Spain.
Amazed that island of Ireland is different to Great Britain, railways had existed for almost a century by the time Ireland achieved independence.
Thought the railway gauge used in Graubünden (Switzerland) for the Rhätische Bahn was way smaller than the standard size? Because of the small space for rail tracks in the mountains
Brunel pushed for a 2140 mm gauge to be used across the UK to allow for a smoother ride, greater capacity and higher speeds. It would’ve required extensive rebuilding across the country and a lot more land use devoted to future rail infrastructure. But it makes for an interesting “what-if”.
I can now die in peace
On top of this oddity, the trams in Helsinki are 1000mm but the ones in Tampere are 1435mm.
I learned a fun, random bit of trivia last week while researching horse-drawn trams. The distance between tram/train rails is 1435 mm (at least in NL, and apparently throughout all of the green areas here) is based on the width of a horse’s ass, since a horse had to fit comfortably between the rails to be able to pull a tram. (Makes sense, since a lot of them were also down streets that had horse-drawn conveyances, but that’s not as much fun.)
Next time you ride a train or tram, start thinking about horse butts because that’s why. I’m trying to find a good source in English.
Cyprus used to have a railway when it was a British colony. I assume they followed the standard gauge system.
[Map for the rest of the world if someone is interested. It also shows significant minority guages](https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sp%C3%A5rvidd#/media/Fil:Rail_gauge_world.png)
Suddenly I understand the names of the boardgames [Irish Gauge](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/161882/irish-gauge) and [Iberian Gauge](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/228372/iberian-gauge).
Ah! Look at central Europe’s tiny gauge!
Iberia has the biggest.
There are [400 km of broad-gauge line in Poland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linia_Hutnicza_Szerokotorowa).
There’s also [a broad-gauge line from Ukraine into eastern Slovakia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzhhorod%E2%80%93Ko%C5%A1ice_broad-gauge_track) that brings iron ore to [US Steel Košice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U._S._Steel_Ko%C5%A1ice,_s.r.o.).
There are also occasionally discussions about [extending the broad-gauge line to Vienna in Austria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko%C5%A1ice%E2%80%93Vienna_broad-gauge_line), potentially making it easier for freight from China and Russia to get to Central Europe.
*Angry DUP noises*
Europe – normal gauge.
Former Soviet Union – wide gauge
Spain – wider than wide gauge
First time where UK is normal
It really triggers me that ALL railway gauges are these weird customary sizes instead of something metrically sensible like, say, 1.5 meters or 2 meters (for big boi trains).
If you spoilsports hadn’t stopped us, we’d now be running on 2000mm Reichstandardspurbreite tracks :/
I like this definition of eastern/western Europe.
I miss Jakub Marian’s blog and I hope that he is okay.
Edit! [He’s actually back!](https://jakubmarian.com/data-science-in-a-bank/) I’m so relieved!
There’s a nice joke explaining how it came to be that the Russian gauge is wider. Unfortunately it’s not really translatable:
​
>Приходят инженеры к Николаю I и спрашивают:
>
>- В Европе ширина колеи 1435 миллиметров. Нам делать так же или шире?
>
>- Нахуй шире, – ответил император.
>
>Инженеры послушались и сделали в России ширину колеи 1524 миллиметра. Примерно на хуй шире.
​
The tzar has decided to build a railroad. He calls the engineers before him and tells them to get to work. The engineers ask:
– In Europe they set the rails apart by 1435 millimeters. Should we do the same or make the track wider?
– Nahui wider? – asked the Tzar. [Nahui = means “Why the f*ck”, but literally this expression is: “By a dick” / “On a dick”]
And so the engineers made the tracks 1524 mm wide, wider exactly by one dick.
Brunel should’ve won. Passenger rail has very different needs from industrial coal mine wagonways, and those are not reflected by standard gauge.
In Japan Most of the railway track are 1067(!)mm wide. But the Shinkansen track is 1435mm Standard gauge.
Iceland has no public trains and The Isle of Man does?
Brunel disapproves of your puny gauges. 7 feet or go home.
To be fair, Lithuania already uses 126 km of standard gauge (out of ~1900 km rail tracks) and till 2026 that number should be increased to more than 500 km (Rail Baltica from PL border to LV border is being built currently (via Kaunas and Panevezys)).
Even more construction is planned later – the two largest cities, Vilnius and Kaunas, would be connected using the standard gauge, and there [would be talks with EC about Kaunas – Klaipeda (port city) railway track funding](https://sumin.lrv.lt/en/news/marius-skuodis-vilnius-and-klaipeda-should-be-placed-on-the-trans-european-transport-network-map). That’s additional 600-700 km of standard gauge tracks (assuming doubled tracks of course) connecting the three largest cities in the country (i.e. half of the country’s population).
we are expecting rail baltica
The great western railway was orginally built with a guage of over 7ft. This was to make it more comfortable for passengers and allow wider goods to be accepted on that network. Unfortunately for brunel the rest of the UK adopted standard guage because it was cheaper to build (you need to flatten less land +narrower tunnels and bridges).
Within a year of brunels death the GWR was reguaged to standard guage.
Everyone point and laugh at iceland
Iceland: 😭
Iberia likes their trains thicc I guess 😳
Presumably the Brits built our railways, how did we end up with a different gauge to the U.K.?
Hitler in 1941-“I’m sure this won’t matter very much.”
What is this?? Some sort of gauge-measuring contest…
Finland: “… and four millimeters!”
Voltage however 😅😅😅
r/mapswithoutcaucasus
Rail Baltica will be standard 1435 mm gauge line through Baltics in addittion to 1520 mm soon. Btw, before World War II there already was 1435 mm line in addition to 1520 mm, so you could take train from Riga to Paris back then.
Also, if narrow gauges are mentioned in case of Isle of Man, Latvia also has one small 30 km public railway 750 mm narrow gauge line from Gulbene to Alūksne, with regular passenger trains.