The above subtitle isn't exactly grammatical, in either language, but it was too catchy to resist when I started thinking about the song about ol' John Henry. I can't remember any other lines from the song, but that one sticks in my mind. At any rate the topic here is rail regauging if you haven't been able to figure that out.

The ability to regauge has been changed a couple of times since the release of FitE in both movement point cost and in railroad engineers available in efforts to fine-tune the RR regauging to match what was actually done. But I'm not sure that this has been accomplished because the current rules are subject to abuse and possibly are rather too liberal, based on my last playing of BARBAROSSA under the changes promulgated by John Astell in TEM 19.

In that game Flavio Carillo and I were playing the Soviets against a German team that focused their main effort in the south. We executed a decent runaway defense almost everywhere, but the Germans massed their RR engineers in the South and were gang repairing and regauging the railroad lines with the greatest of ease. By Oct 11 they were almost to Kharkov, having gone the long way through Kremenchug! This totally unhinged our defense in the South as we couldn't create new defensive lines faster than they were destroyed by panzers supported by relays of trucks.

We were seriously worried about losing Voronezh during the first frost turn, but the game was called for several reasons before we ever found out. My worthy opponents dedicated most of their engineering assets to this so they were absolutely no threat to Leningrad or even much of one to Moscow and not many airfields were built or repaired so they definitely paid a price for their success, but I'm not at all sure that they should have had the ability to do what they did.

Now I'm perfectly willing to concede that my play as Southwestern Front commander might have been less than optimal since I don't seem to have the right mindset for the Soviets in '41 (if you wish proof positive see the second "Gorza" playtest report in TEM #36 or talk to Victor Hauser), but I can scorch earth with the best of them! Most every rail hex between Kiev and points east as well as all of those west of Kiev that I could take care of without compromising my runaway were demolished and it didn't seem to make much difference! If I hadn't demolished everything all those engineers would have simply built airfields or done something productive so I'm not sure it made any real difference to turn Kiev MD into a moonscape.

One tactic that I found particularly infuriating was that several RR and construction engineer units would advance way beyond the regauged RR line and start regauging back towards the current railhead. As best I can determine this was not normal procedure, possibly because rail cars were required to bring up any needed replacement rails, as they were far too heavy to move any distance in any quantity.

Yes, I know I'm discussing regauging and not repair, but the two seem to be a bit more closely linked than shown in the game. This might be because the Soviet railroad system had to be both repaired and regauged before the Germans could use it to any great extent in 1941. A rules change that any hexes to be regauged must be either adjacent to a hex already in the correct gauge or will be so by the end of the phasing player's turn might solve this particular abuse. Any hexes that aren't immediately revert to their prior gauge.

I'm satisfied with the current RR engineer OB so let's not manipulate that to take care of the problem.

Introduction
Gunfire from the Wine-Dark Sea
Do Frog Legs Taste Better than Crow?
Old Johann Heinrich was an Eisenbahn Mann
Heavy Transports
The Jets Revisited