Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!hp4nl!ruuinf!gerard
From: gerard@ruuinf.UUCP (Gerard Tel)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Russian access to usenet
Summary: Width of Russian Railways -- Western paranoia
Keywords: paranoia or adaptation to reality
Message-ID: <920@ruuinf.UUCP>
Date: 22 Dec 88 12:40:23 GMT
References: <204@imspw6.UUCP> <5141@brspyr1.BRS.Com>
Organization: Univ of Utrecht, Dept of CS
Lines: 36



In article <5141@brspyr1.BRS.Com>, miket@brspyr1.BRS.Com (Mike Trout) writes:
> In article <204@imspw6.UUCP>, bob@imspw6.UUCP (Bob Burch) writes:
> 
> The Russians have traditionally adopted many techniques to hamper invaders.
> Soviet railway gauge (the distance between the rails) is 5' 0", as opposed to
> the semi-universal 4' 8.5".  This was a serious problem for the German
> invaders in WW2;

This is a common explanation of the width of Russian railways.
However it is a typical example of Western paranoia, it is not true
and I will give two arguments for this.
In the first place, it is easier to invade a country with wide tracks
using narrow trains than vice-versa: you can add one iron bar between
the two existing ones (which the Germans did), while you cannot widen
a track like that because the crossbars are too small.  So if the
Russians chose their trackwidth for this reason it would have been
narrower than ours.
Secondly, the Russian track width was determined EARLIER that the
track widt in the rest of Europe.  While in west europe there were many
companies each using their own tracks, the Russian czar coordinated
things better and decided on one width.
The only possible conclusions from these two arguments is that the
width in the west was choosen so as to make Russian invasion
impossible.  However, I would not draw that one.  So let's draw no
conclusion at all.
By the way did you ever have a ride in a wide-track train?  It is much
more comfortable than ours.

                                 Gerard Tel.

> NSA food:  Iran sells Nicaraguan drugs to White House through CIA, DIA & NRO.
  ^^^ Let us add some KGB food...
       Imperialists plan sabotage in Soviet arms factory
       that was rebuilt to peacefull toy plant.