Gauge Outreach
The opposite of a gauge orphan is a line of one gauge which reaches into the territory composed mainly of another gauge. Examples include five broad gauge lines of Victoria which crossed the border into otherwise standard gauge New South Wales. Similarly, the standard gauge line from Albury to Melbourne in 1962 which eliminated most transshipment at Albury, especially the need for passengers to change trains in the middle of the night.
A Russian broad gauge line reaches out from Ukraine into Slovakia to carry minerals; another broad gauge line reaches also from Ukraine into Poland to carry heavy iron ore and steel products without the need for transshipment as would be the case if there were a break of gauge at the border. In 2008, it was proposed to extend the Slovak line to Vienna.
From 1994, the Rail Baltic proposal emerged to build a 728 km North-South line to link European standard gauge railways from Poland to Kaunas, Lithuania, via Riga, Latvia to Tallinn, Estonia.
The gauge outreach from Kalgoorlie to Perth, Western Australia partly replaced the original narrow gauge line, and partly rebuilt that line with better curves and gradients as double track dual gauge.
In 2010, a proposal surfaced to build a broad gauge line from an iron ore mine at Kaunisvaara in Sweden (whose rail network is otherwise standard gauge) to Finland which has a broad gauge network.
Read more about this topic: Break-of-gauge