There are more effective ways. Spain has a wider gauge than France/Europe.
Special trains run the international services using wagons that can change the gauge while rolling slowly over a special track section
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Hello Yuri,
Thank you for mentioning the different track gauges. I included that information on my review of the Teplushka, but that would not be evident if people do not read the review. I should have noted it in my reply above.
Armor 35 released track with CЖД gauge, “standard gauge”, and track re-gauged from 1524mm to 1435mm, with imprints of the tie plates and holes of the spikes for the wider gauge. Very cool!
Are you familiar with the wrong number and stenciling of these NTV? I’ve wondered what these suffixes mean?
3п.333-269
М-кв.335-649
Бϱл.449-972
0к.475-482
Thank you again for the information. All my best, Fred
I have not read all the replies below yet, yet your and Erwin’s replies bring up some interesting points. I will be lazy and use some English measurements. Standard gauge is 4 foot 8 1/2 in. Russian gauge is 5 foot. Indian and Pakistan used/use 6 ft. The Indian railroads followed the practice of British railroads, some of which were “broad gauge” (5’ or 6’). Britain’s Great Western even built theirs to 7 ft gauge! There are other weird gauges out there like in Maine, 2 ft gauge, and I think Australia is still uses three and a half foot. I think they’re her some industrial railways that are even smaller.
I do not remember the metric value between rails for narrow gauge, but 3-ft narrow gauge track was also used in various places in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North and South America, in Germany the Harz Mountain railway; at the United States at one time in the late 19th century one could take narrow gauge trains from, if I recall correctly, Portland Maine all the way out into the interior of Colorado, without having to use standard gauge railroads, if one was willing to suffer the circuitous route. The United States also had “broad gauge” (5-6’) railroads, the Erie Railroad comes to mind. I recall that in the late 1880s, the decision was made to change all the railroads to standard gauge in one day, although I think that the Erie may have decided to hold on to the broad gauge for a little while.
Oh that reminds me, the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway also uses 2-foot gauge.
So what to do when different gauge railways had to interchange? Well, you could pull the freight cars up to a depot, and have laborers unload one train and put the product into the other. Or, as the Louisville and Nashville Railroad did in Evansville indiana, they actually jacked each train car off its trucks, and rolled the different gauge trucks under the freight car.
Probably way more information than anybody was looking for, but I find it very interesting and fun to discuss.
With the monopoly ownership of almost all railways in the USSR and Russia by RZD, this huge organization is divided into territorial divisions. The rolling stock is assigned to one of these units, for which short letter designations have been introduced.
“М-кв.” (Москва) stands for Moscow Railway
“Бел.” (Беларуская) - Belarusian railway
“Зп.” (Западная) - Western railway
“Ок.” (Октябрьская) - Oktyabrskaya railway
The number of the wagon is also displayed on the decals. Six-digit numbers were used until 1963, seven-digit numbers until 1984, now eight-digit numbers. But there are a lot of subtleties.
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There is a list on Wikipedia that shows the withs of various railroads. The top of the list is for rideable model railways, but further down it shows actual railroads…
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