A 2018 article id'd via Twitter and there appears not to be a thread on this theme here. Note the author's comment: The Abstract states: Link to the free article on the author's website: The Influence of Railways on Military Operations in the Russo-German War 1941–1945 The author's website has more, his focus is logistics. Enjoy!
oh gauges what a nightmare from the website below There were two types of gauge — ‘track gauge’, which was the width between the tracks, and the ‘loading gauge’, which was the volume occupied by the rolling stock and determined the size of tunnels, station overhangs, and how close other equipment could be placed to the track. At the start of the railway age, a wide variety of gauges were used — for instance, in Russia the first track laid between St. Petersburg and Tsarskoye Selo in 1834 by Austrian engineers used a 6-foot gauge; the second between St. Petersburg and Moscow in 1843 by US Major J. Whistler, who chose a 5-foot gauge, and the third, which connected Warsaw with Vienna in 1845, used Standard gauge of 4 feet 8¾ inches so that the trains could run on the Austrian network. Contrary to popular myth, the Russian 5-foot gauge was chosen simply because it was fashionable at that particular time and was the same gauge used across most of the Southern States in America. As a flat country with few tunnels, Russia was unique in having a generous loading gauge, but this meant that even when re-gauged, Soviet wagons would not fit onto German railways, and loads had to be trans-shipped at the Polish border. The standardization across Europe on 4’8 3/4” gauge only occurred once networks started to link up, and during this process there have been a number of instances when a gauge was altered to match that of a neighbor. In 1886, the 18,500-km 5’ network of the Southern States was altered to 4’9” in just 36 hours with much of the rolling stock converted at the same time. Similarly, in 1915 following the capture of Poland, German railway engineers altered 6,000 km of 5’ gauge over to the European standard in a matter of months.
There is a very informative and long thread on German Railways in the East http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=203286
