Quote Originally Posted by 12bolts View Post
Here in Australia, the people who are paid to think ahead and plan for the future decided it would be a good idea for the then "person in charge of making expensive decisions" to just choose the gauge line they liked best, (or traditionally was used in their home country) for their state. Consequently we ended up with 3 main gauges that changed at the border! This required the changing of trains, (upto 6 times) for pax, and reloading freight for interstate transport. Our tax $$$ at work!!
A whole continent to yourself and you ended up with three railroad gauges and a timezone offset by a HALF-hour. Fascinating, just fascinating.