Suppossedly, railroad standards were different in different nations to prevent an invader from taking control of one end of a line and blitzing through your land. Tech could learn a thing or two.
That was sometimes a consideration in rail standards. Other times, it was politics or nationalism or simply because that's what they built. In the case of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Hungarians liked to assert that they were separate and rail gauge was one of the ways they did it, which was a bit of a problem for Austrian logistics in WW1.
Suppossedly, railroad standards were different in different nations to prevent an invader from taking control of one end of a line and blitzing through your land. Tech could learn a thing or two.
That was sometimes a consideration in rail standards. Other times, it was politics or nationalism or simply because that's what they built. In the case of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Hungarians liked to assert that they were separate and rail gauge was one of the ways they did it, which was a bit of a problem for Austrian logistics in WW1.