Break-of-gauge - Ideal Location

Ideal Location

Transshipment hubs at breaks-of-gauge tend to happen at or near international borders because of formal principles about which gauge to have in a country, driver education, and unwillingness to allow too much foreign traffic and since it suits customs operations. Taken to its limits, the break-of-gauge can be like the windswept Wallangarra/Jennings (population 385/130 respectively) where it carefully straddles the state borders, with the station building being designed half with Queensland architecture and half with New South Wales architecture. Wallangarra barely had one hotel and one shop for the convenience of travellers. A more sensible solution would have been to build the break-of-gauge at the already existing town of Tenterfield (population 3130), 12 miles (19 km) away, where there were several hotels and shops.

Passenger breaks-of-gauge should be located in important cities where many passengers would change trains anyway, like for the Japanese and Spanish high-speed railways. They should preferably not be placed in the middle of nowhere, where sleeping passengers may have to be woken in the middle of the night. The border between the Russian and Standard gauges does often have such a location, and therefore bogies are exchanged on the sleeper cars.