RLMS: The Russian Gauge Question

Why was the Russian rail gauge set to 1,524 mm? And why did it change to 1,520? In this video, we correct our repetition of a myth about the Russian rail gauge and elaborate on how the Russian gauge evolved over time.

Correction: We somehow said that George Washington Whistler was the son of the painter James McNeil Whistler, rather than being James' father. Apologies for the mistake, and thanks to the viewer who corrected us.

[maciek_k.cichon]

I've recently dived in to the Russian gauge my self. In the first part of the 19th Century it was as you've said, but past Crimean war, Polish January Uprising and deterioration of friendship between Russia, Prussia and Austria military reasoning came to be decisive factor, at least in Russian held Poland.
When Dęblin (then Ivangorod)-Dąbrowa Railway (IDR) was considered in the 1870' it stumbled upon reluctance from the Ministry of War because of the proximity of the Austrian border. Starting point near the border in Sandomierz (planned from 1850') was thrown away in favor of Dęblin upon Vistula river and it's Ivangorod fortress - making it military rail crossing - one of only two in the country (second being Warsaw). The brass also demanded three tunnels for eventual rail blockage. It was rising costs and eventually the military agreed for only one tunnel but far away from everything, this station namesake - Miechów was 8 km away, and there were means placed for demolition of bigger bridges (about 18 out of 316). I've stumbled upon some documents claiming the brass final permission to build was bargained for military improvements of Moscow-Brest Railway.
The Ministry of War consideration was crucial in the build of this railway, but the other factor was monopoly. IDR touched the Warsaw-Vienna Railway (WVR) in two places and WVR considered it encroachment on it's territory - the West bank of Vistula. Both railways shipped coal and had similar course of tracks with IDR making it both closer to the Ukrainian heavy industries regions and the same gauge as the rest of Russian net.
This is very interesting topic, I'm glad I've found your channel.

[michaeldibb]

@3:57 1829mm is exactly 6 feet. It might have helped if you gave the Imperial measurement as that would explain an otherwise spurious random number.

[neiloflongbeck]

Only after the Railway Regulation (Gauge) Act of 1846 did 4ft 8.5in get called Standard Gauge, but only in Great Britain. In Ireland the Standard Gauge was set at 5ft 3in.

[tjejojyj]

Excellent video. This is one time using Imperial measures would help because 1524mm = 5’. I presume Russia was using metric but an American engineer would prefer a measure easy for them.

May I suggest your next myth to debunk is that rail gauge is the primary issue in railroad construction costs.

While there is an “obvious” saving in sleeper lengths this assumes everything else is constant. A railroad/railway is designed for an axle load and speed which affect the weight of rail used, the dimensions and frequency of sleepers, the ballast, the route alignment, the strength of bridges etc.

If you want to examine the rail gauge debacle in Australia I highly recommend the following PhD thesis, which is available online:

The Myth of the Standard Guage: Rail Guage Choice in Australia, 1850-1901
Mills, John Ayres
2007
268 pages

[whaleguy]

As a railfan, this was very soothing.

[MrKotBonifacy]

5:33 - "at that time" there was no Poland, it's been long ago partitioned between Austria, Prussia and Russia. Thus it was "Polish territories", or "the land/ territory of what used to be Poland" that was under Russian occupation (and therefore, a "control").
I know, this is about railways, not history - still, it's better to represent facts correctly.
And as far as the "Rusian gauge (hi)story" goes...

As probably many of you know, there's this joke/ urban legend about "bureaucracy and standards that live forever" linking "modern standard gauge to the width of Roman war chariots" (that had to accommodate two horse arses, side by side in front of it, and which made ruts in early European roads, built by Romans, so latter builders of wagons and couches had to set the wheel spacing to match those ruts to prevent those wheels - and axles - from frequent breakage, and them this "gauge" was inherited by tram builders, and so on...) - but there's another, less known joke about Russian gauge (5 ft or 1524 mm, latter redefined as 1520 mm, or 4 ft 11-27/32 in).
So the story (joke) goes like that: when it came to standardization of railways in Russian Empire, foreign engineers tasked with the job asked the Tsar whether he wants them to build it "to the European/ English standard, or broader?" - to which Tsar barked back "на хер шире" (na kher shyre - literally "on a dick wider" - but the phrase "на хер" is best translated as "why the fuck/ what for [wider]").
However, the tsar's response was uttered without a rising tone (indicating a question in Russian and other Slavic languages), which is often the case when asking a rhetorical question with an obvious answer, AND since you don't argue with Tsar (or ask him for explanations, however extravagant his request may seem), after couple of measurements taken among themselves they arrived at some median figure and added it to the standard gauge width...

...and this is how we arrived ad Russian gaude, or at least "so the joke says" ;-)

[jeremybarker]

For a time in the 1970s British Rail reduced standard gauge on straight track by 3mm from 1435mm to 1432mm because it was expected (my recollection as a result of the research to produce high-speed 2-axle vehicles) to produce smoother running.

[gaving.griffon]

Funny thing is that the southern states used 5ft gauge.

[astridvallati]

1524mm gauge ( 5 feet) as Imperial Russia was then based on an Imperial British Inch system.
5ft was also the majority Gauge of the "Antebellum South"..., so it was easy to influence the Russians to adopt 5 ft Gauge. The US, after the Civil War, given the destruction of most of the 5ft gauge System...so rebuilding by US Military Railroads during and after the Civil War to Northern "Standard" gauge se the US eventually by the 1880s, nationally standardized to 1435mm, except for some Mountain, Forestry, rail systems in 3ft Narrw Gauge.
Imperial Russian Inch system lasted till 1918, with the Bolsheviks adopting the Metric System for all Post 1918 Engineering usages.
(Ordnance, and other heavy engineering matters retained pre1918 specifications, but described in Metric Terms.
..so eg a 3-inch gun became a 76, 2 mm gun. The Mosin Nagant Rifle design retained all its Inch/ Whitworth specification as designed in1890-91 to the end of PR China Production in the 1960s.
The Gauge Question is much more interesting than quoted in this video.
BTW, 1829mm is " Six Foot" a gauge originally used by the Erie Canal Company in the 1840s...USA really had a hotch-potch of gauges till the outcome of the civil war (1865) and the completion of the standard gauge TransContinental RR in 1869.

[Eurobazz]

I'd love to see a similar programme on track gauges in the USA. Another good topic is the reason why trains in some countries not associated with the UK, drive on the left, e.g. Belgium and France.

[RichardLewisCaldwell]

Or one could just go with engineering:
It is easy and quick for combat engineers to narrow the gauge: Move one or both rails towards the center and you're done. But widening the gauge is much harder. Cross ties, tunnels, and lots of stuff doesn't widen easily.
So if you want to protect against invasion while keeping yourself open to invade others, make sure your gauge is the narrowest. Russia chose to give itself a handicap when it comes to Europe's favorite pastime.

[philipdove]

To go back to the Roman gauge myth. In 1988 when I first lived on Tyneside I went out to Housesteads Roman fort one evening and measured the very prominent grooves in the threshold of the west gateway. they were 4 feet 2". it didn't matter how you measured the grooves they were nowhere near a gauge of 4foot 8 and a half inches apart. During the British Gauge wars of the early Victorian times the advocates of broad gauge called the gauge favoured by the Stephensons and others the coal cart gauge. According to Clothier, A.C. Beyond the Blaydon races, Waggonways and Railways of the south east Northumberland Coa;field. Part 1, 2014. In July 1754 William Brown overseer at Throckley colliery to the west of Newcastle says the gauge of his railway is 4' 2.5"., later this waggonway was linked to other colliery systems so presumably was 5 foot gauge, but how this was measured is unclear. by September 1786 a maintenance contract for the lines of the connected Walbottle and Throckley Waggonway refer to 4 foot 8 and a half inches, which the author says would agree with a stated gauge of 5' if the four foot eight and a half is the inside measurement betweeen the rails. This is the earliest documentary reference to that Gauge according to author Alan Clothier.

[boxcarthehusky]

They use broad gauge for the same reason the American south did, they could haul more and at a higher speed for a lower cost.

[mikefisher]

Fascinating video. One correction, though : George Washington Whistler was the father of the painter James McNeil Whistler, not his son.

[heronimousbrapson]

George Washington Whistler was the FATHER of James McNeill Whistler, not the son. J.M. Whistler painted his mother (George's wife).

[rdreher]

There is an annoying tradition in English of pronouncing tsar as "zar, " probably due to influence from the Polish style spelling of "czar." Being Russian-American and growing up with the language, boy do I prefer the proper Russian pronunciation of "tsar, " with a "ts" sound, like the zz in "pizza" or German Z-sound.

What is definitely never correct though is pronouncing any other Russian word or name with the letter Ц "ts" as a Z-sound. Царское Село or Tsárskoye Seló, is most certainly not pronounced as "Zarsko Sello." The old fashioned transliteration style on that post card might have thrown you off, so I don't blame you for the confusion. In languages like German Z is "ts" so sometimes you can get "tz" used to represent the "ts" sound of Russian. Even more confusingly, the letter Е ye in Russian is often Latinzed to our letter E, which it resembles, rather than the "yeh" sound it actually represents. This is very important when you have a combination like ОЕ, which is supposed to be two separate syllables: o-ye. Finally, accent location is very important Russian, but is not written, and thus not often represented in transliteration either. Село is like se-LOW, not SELLo. More like "below" than like "fellow." To sum up: TSAR-skuh-yeh sih-LOH.

Similarly, you have have to mind where you put the stress in the name Malenkov too. It goes on the end.
Маленков Malenkóv → muh-lyin-KOFF

Another example where bad transliteration can confuse non-Russians is when you said Aleksandrovsk' as "Alexandro vosk." Александр Aleksándr is of course from the same Greek name as English Alexander, but in English we've turned the X-sound into a GZ sound, while Russian has not. This is way more clear if you write it closer to the way Russians do - КС or "KS." This is why in Russian, the nickname for Aleksandr is Sasha, (a-lek)-SA(n-dr) → SA+sha. The "drovsk" part is easier to understand if you realize the letter В or "V" will de-voice, or become an F-sound, before an S-sound. a-lyik-SAN-drofsk. Now you don't really need to insert an extra syllable to say it.

One more interesting thing, when you said the name of the Tsarskoye Selo Railway you said it half in Russian: "Tsarkosel'skiy Railway." However, in Russian, a railroad, or железная дорога zheléznaya doróga "iron road, " is a female word. You have to make the adjectives match the gender of the noun they modify, so железный zheléznyy "iron" becomes железная дорога zheléznaya doróga "iron road, " and likewise Царскосельский Tsarskosel'skiy becomes Царскосельская железная дорога Tsarsokosél'skaya zheléznaya doróga.

[Eurobazz]

You said that the track gauge change from 1524 mm to 1520 mm took 20 years starting in the 1970s. Were prisoners from the gulags used?

[andrewemery]

And again, errors: The Stephenson Gauge was based on the gauge of the Coal Chauldron in the North East of England, which was a hold-over from the farm cart which had developed in Roman times based on the width of the backside of an Ox. I the Wet of Newcastle is the ruin of a Roman gatehouse where the ruts are 4ft 8.5ins apart. You really don't do any research, do you..

[JelMain]

1829mm is 72", 6'
1435mm is 4'8.5", Standard gauge

The odd figures are because you're using an unusual metric.