this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
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I assume he’s referring to the same question I was asking: did you just extrapolate this from the phrase “fucked up, disastrous mess” (referring to the sheer number of different systems in Europe?), because I think the big long reply above seriously undersells the fact that “20th century conflicts” aren’t even mentioned or gestured at in the video. There’s a map showing…different countries…but while 20th century conflicts changed various borders in Europe, they aren’t the origin of the borders between countries in Europe, or the origin of different European countries developing their own independent rail systems without any centralised plan - because they’re different countries, and the various bodies which today unify much of the continent only began to come into existence after the Second World War.
If we were talking about Former Yugoslavia, you’d actually be right! The integrated rail infrastructure of that region was completely devastated by the 1990s. But that’s not the focus here.
I didn't say he explained why this is the case in this video. I believe he may have talked about it elsewhere, but long-story short, European nation-states didn't want unified railroad systems because they were afraid their opponents will use them to invade them during war.
That does clarify the point, but I also don’t think that it’s true. It may well be that a major reason proposals for unified European rail never got off the ground before recently was that European countries rejected such proposals on grounds that it would make it easier for them to be invaded. But the rail systems in different European countries nonetheless developed independently, using different technology and standards, mostly (arguably) in the 19th century.
This complex process doesn’t reduce to 20th century FUBAR, even insofar as diplomatic and security considerations were involved in its evolution (and yet of course beginning in the 19th, not the 20th, century).
I gotta be honest with you, at this point I don't even know what you're arguing for 😅
Sorry, but the history of technology is one of my things, and I think that there’s a misrepresentation going on here about how technology develops. Not only is it rarely mono-causal, it’s extremely rare that one cause even predominates in the evolution of a technology (such as a railway system). I don’t think it’s the case that 20th century conflicts have remotely a large enough impact on the development of the European railway systems to properly explain why it is that they aren’t more integrated.
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.