Ukrainian rail network boss Oleksandr Kamyshin

Wasn't there talk in our post war era about keeping some steam in storage for national emergencies.

Sweden was well known for this strategy, heavily relying on electrified networks that would suffer from an EMP blast. My group has long been the benefactor of one of these "cold war reserve locomotives". It took us 30 years of on and off service to use up the life of the final shopping she received before entering the reserve. She finally fell from service at the end of the Christmas trains last year.

If Ukraine has enough locomotives in service to carry forward a backup for some services, that would be quite interesting!

I believe Poland held onto stored USATC S160s well into the '90s in the event of a Soviet Union invasion. They ended up destroying them with leftover Cold War munitions that they had lying around and also needed to dispose of, rather than waste money on acetylene.

Not quite. I think you have your "facts" a little scrambled. Poland was a member of the Warsaw Pact and as such an ally of the Soviet Union, although maybe a somewhat unwilling member, so they hardly had to fear an attack from them. And where did you get the idea that they blew up their obsolete steam engines with ammunition they had "laying around"? Hardly an efficient way of disposal of either.
Sounds like a glorified wives tale.

I actually found where I read the bit about disposing of them with munitions. It was actually on here in a thread about USATC 611.

http://rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2396

I admittedly jumbled things together: there were countries that held onto steam in reserve for if the Cold War heated up, and Poland supposedly had USATC S160s stored into the 1990s.

Some British folks I've listened to say that this smacks of nothing more than either a publicity stunt or a thought experiment.

Certainly, steam COULD be used to propel trains in a dire emergency--and anyone who thinks Ukraine isn't in a dire state of emergency already is kidding themselves. But note that the locomotive depicted is a narrow-gauge steamer, not any big Russian-sized (1520mm gauge) steamer.

Supposing some EMP or hacker somehow managed to take out both all the diesels on the Pacific Coast and/or the diesel supply chain (just play along with my thought experiment here). How many freight trains could be handled by every operable steam locomotive west of the Mississippi? Not many................

Some of our younger members may have to google this to get the reference, but this is one of my favorite things about Railfair '99 in Sacramento: ATSF 3751 had a sign taped to the back of the tender that said simply, "Y2K Compliant."

I wouldn't be shocked to see a massive track regauging project to standard gauge (a la the Erie) in Ukraine after the war ends, even though it would be an incredible undertaking with roughly 14k miles of track. Ukraine has made it clear it wants to move closer to Europe, and I think their relationship with Russia is likely to be poor for the remainder of all of our lives. Russian gauge is just under 5' so it would need to be moved in around 3".

One thing I am surprised hasn't been suggested is using North American locomotives for electrical power generation. It would mean regauging them, an idler for coupling to them and some other work, and a car full of electrical equipment, but once accomplished they could move to wherever they are needed in response to Russian attacks on power plants. I am told that in Run 6 (which produces an output of 60Hz) a single typical modern unit can power around 200 houses. A similar plan was started (using old cabless BN B30-7Bs) during the blackouts in southern California around 22 years ago but wasn't ready when the blackouts ended.

Some railroads, like the Frisco stored steam locos after dieselizing in case of an emergency. Most of them were cut up in the late '50s. They did save 4 of the 4500s (4-8-4s), 6 1500s (4-8-2)and some 2-8-2s for donation.

Regauging SOME key lines by adding a third rail might be a faster and temporary move. It would still require more complex switches but there was a lot of three-rail trackage scattered around this country. Detrucking and retrucking from the European common (Standard gauge?) to broad gauge would be labor intensive and slow. If we are talking about grain trains, it might be easier to build a few large transloading silos. I would build them outside the borders of Ukania and extend the broad gauge to them. A few less Ukranian targets.

Original thread on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/akamyshin/status/15 ... Z6PMoLGYMw

Not possible with only 3-1/2" diffidence between the gauges, that's the width of the railhead of the narrower gauge with no room for the flangeway for the wide gauge. Dual gauge would have to be four rail. Hardly worth it, they should just decide who they want to be in bed with and rebuild to match. At least going to a narrower gauge avoids the problem of interference with too narrow truck frames.

A lot of their track uses concrete ties, which I don't think would work with a third rail. It probably would mean replacing the ties at the same time as changing the gauge, which makes it incredibly expensive. I still think it is inevitable, just not all at once.

Finland removed themselves from Soviet control long before Ukraine did. Aren't they still 5 foot gauge?