Tom McCann Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's interesting to study about how different
> nations considered the military applications of
> railroads.
>
> Germany, as explained, probably was the most
> offensive minded when it came to using their
> trains. A country like Russia, on the other hand,
> may have thought defensively when it built its
> rail lines to a different gauge so as to preclude
> an invader (read Germany) from using its own
> rolling stock on those lines.
>
> Great Britain, while not really having to worry
> too much about a land invasion, did have to
> consider what their more restrictive loading gauge
> meant for the size of military equipment, for
> example, not building trucks or combat vehicles
> that would exceed the height of bridges or the
> dimensions of tunnels.


From page 70 of the Ballantine edition of Tuchman's Guns of August:

"During mobilization the average Russian soldier had to be transported 700 miles, four times as far as the average German soldier, and Russia had available one tenth as many railroads per square kilometer as Germany"

Of course the very factor of great distances eventually favored the Soviets in WWII when Khrushchev relocated the armaments factories east of the Urals, and Wehrmacht supply lines were very long, and continually harassed by partisans.