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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.
Well, they’re arguing that your claim is nonsense. Here’s the reason why different countries ended up with different standards for various railway things: interoperability simply wasn’t that big a deal at the time. These weren’t continent-spanning high speed train services, they chuffed along at a speed of 30-40mph and had frequent stops because the locomotives needed regular watering and coaling and the passengers needed regular watering and emptying as well (no on-board toilets or restaurant cars yet). Border crossings usually involved a lengthy stop while formalities were completed, and if a train was crossing the border they’d simply do what happens right up to the present day in many cases: change the locomotive for one belonging to the company that operated the railways in the country they were entering, staffed by drivers who knew the local rules, signalling and practices.
I know this doesn’t cover for breaks of gauge, but they were handled in a similar way – border stations were simply connected to both systems, so when crossing from (say) France into Spain passengers would alight, clear immigration, and board a new train on the opposite platform to take them onward into Spain. The French train would then usually (all going well) return into France taking the passengers who’d left the train from Spain (which falls mainly on the plain) when it arrived there. Freight was obviously harder to transship, which is why at least initially the railways were more interested in enabling through-running of goods wagons without having to offload and reload the whole shipment than they were in through-running of passenger carriages.