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Marking 125 Years Since the Great Gauge Change
Arnold Reinhold writes "This month ends with the 125th anniversary of one of the most remarkable achievements in technology history. Over two days beginning Monday, May 31, 1886, the railroad network in the southern United States was converted from a five-foot gauge to one compatible with the slightly narrower gauge used in the US North, now know as standard gauge. The shift was meticulously planned and executed. It required one side of every track to be moved three inches closer to the other. All wheel sets had to be adjusted as well. Some minor track and rolling stock was sensibly deferred until later, but by Wednesday the South's 11,500 mile rail network was back in business and able to exchange rail cars with the North. Other countries are still struggling with incompatible rail gauges. Australia still has three. Most of Europe runs on standard gauge, but Russia uses essentially the same five foot gauge as the old South and Spain and Portugal use an even broader gauge. India has a multi-year Project Unigauge, aimed at converting its narrow gauge lines to the subcontinent's five foot six inch standard."
I took the trans mongolian railway from Moscow to Beijing about 10 years ago. One memorable experience is that near the border between Russia and Mongolia (or Mongolia and China i forget) they will change the bogie's on the entire train because the gauges differ in russia and china. The entire trainset is lifted up; the bogies moved out and new ones put in place. A very memorable experience.
naah sig schmig
Ooo can I reply to the troll?
Yep. I sure want to leave Australia and move back to the US. I'm getting so sick of the higher salaries, greater number of holidays, mandated 4-6 weeks of annual leave, the more casual work-to-live culture, cleaner environment, low crime rate, higher life expectancy, affordable healthcare, booming economy, 1-5% unemployment (depending on State), good food, having decent quality TV news and current affairs (ABC/SBS), stronger consumer protection laws, massively lower poverty rate, having more choice in phone and internet services, not getting nudie-scanned or groped at airports, oh the list goes on. I'm just itching to get out of here!
Ok so that's a bit tongue-in-cheek - I'm a dual American and Australian citizen and still spend a lot of time in both countries. No emi/immigration required for me. And there's still stuff that the US has Australia beat at. The highway system there is better than in Australia (which suffers from having a huge area but not a huge population/tax base to fund things from). The cost of living (particularly housing) is less too (though, wages are lower which offsets some of that advantage). The natural environment is also more diverse (don't get me wrong - Australia is beautiful, but it simply doesn't have the diversity of environments and climates that the US/North America does).
But at this point in time I don't think you'd find to many Australians wanting to emigrate to the US. Perhaps the very wealthy, who would like to take advantage of the lower income tax for high earners. But Australia has been incredibly prosperous for the last decade or two - the middle class along with the rich. The financial crisis didn't even scratch it. Not surprisingly, it consistently ranks as one of the top handful of places to be (both in 'economic' and 'quality of life' indices).
Having said that, there is a HUGE number of Australian tourists in the US in the last year or so. This is because it's now incredibly cheap to do so: the AUD is worth more than the USD for the first time in history (thanks to the US Fed printing USD like it's going out of style). The buying power of the AUD in the US is huge at the moment. Combined with generally higher Aussie wages and the already-low prices of goods in the US, it's a shopping bonanza. I have guys at work ask me to get clothes and running shoes and stuff for them when I visit the US because due to the currency movements it's literally less than half the cost. Hell, for big ticket items, it'd be cheaper to fly to the US, buy it, and fly back, than to buy it locally...