Zenfox

Track gauges

Hi. The statement on Finnish track gauge is sourced in relevant places (I linked to). If you want to challenge those sources, you should go toa talkpage and discuss. Removing a sourced statement could be WP:EDITWARRING, so be careful. -DePiep (talk) 20:25, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes I noticed that it was also erroneusly stated in the wiki article you referred to. I thanked you on the comment on my reversal on pointing to another erroneous article! May I suggest that you read the whole article "5ft and 1520 mm gauge"  ; in the section "Technical" there has already been a detailed description of the history of Finnish and Russian gauges related to Russian conversion to 1520mm gauge. BTW, I know very well that this is a common error in railway articles also in other languages, so don't worry, you are not alone! There are also published books that contain this same error. Here is the Finnish official document; look at page 10 (it is in Finnish, sorry, but you can see the numbers) Trust me on this, I have been an active member of the Finnish Railway Historical Society (Suomen rautatiehistoriallinen seura) for decades! I kindly ask you not to add any unnecessary warnings, I am not a vandal. Sources, especially wiki articles, can be wrong. Zenfox (talk) 21:27, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

Then what is wrong wioth the sources already present in the articles? If you can read Finnish, you should be able to check more of them and prove them wrong. And I did warn you correctly, because you ignored the sources present. (You still do, here). The place to discuss the sources is at article talkpage (where more people can read Finnish sources, likely). And whatever you do, please stop patronising me. -DePiep (talk) 21:42, 20 December 2020 (UTC)

What is wrong is that the sources actually state that the Finnish gauge is 1524 mm, not 1520 mm. I did not ignore the sources. Here's another, already present in the source list of the "Track Gauge" article

Thanks, this is usefull new information (to me): so it is about "1524 mm" vs. "1520 mm". Very understandable wrt "Russian gauge". Will take a look at the talkpage. -DePiep (talk) 16:28, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

References

Result is OK now? -DePiep (talk) 07:16, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it's OK. As for the reason of the soviet change from 1524 mm to 1520 mm, I have heard talk (but just talk, not any written sources!), that the reason was not some kind of metrification but the need to take care of too large differences between badly worn wheelsets and the actual gauge of the tracks. It was easier and cheaper to narrow the gauge of main tracks during regular maintenance and replacement of rails than to replace tens or even hundreds of thousands of wheelsets. You can't narrow the distance between worn wheelset flanges just by using a lathe. Because I don't know any written sources on this, I haven't added this to any wikipedia articles. In Finland, because of better maintenance of rolling stock, there was no need for this kind of operation, so Finland kept the original 1524 mm.-Zenfox (talk) 08:37, 26 December 2020 (UTC)