An Alternate Railroad- Steam in Central Europe

[Ofaloaf]

Some fellow has been working for years on a little what-if about a fictional German(-Czech?) standard-guage railroad that refused to retire its steam fleet in the mid-20th century. The Ruhnian State Railways website can be found here.

Very well detailed stuff, looks like, and some of the material may be inspirational for anybody who wants to toss in an alternate rail evolution in their TLs. All the manufacturers are OTL until the postwar era, when the author gives all further designs to the in-house "RSR Works", likely because there were no more OTL big-name locomotive construction out there afterwards who could build steam locomotives anymore.

Admittedly, some of the terminology may be confusing to someone lacking an intricate knowledge of railroading, but a simple google search for "compound locomotives" or "garratt articulated" will do the trick most of the time.

 

[Ofaloaf]

A further perusal of the site suggests that it's actually for some ill-defined fictional country that was formerly part of Austria-Hungary named "Ruhnia". From the sound of it, it's in some mountainous region of the former empire-- somewhere in the Sudetenland, perhaps?

Besides, just look at the locomotive designs:

It's just so beautiful.

 

[Thande]

So Ruhnia is the Austro-Hungarian equivalent of Tarrantry then? Country invented purely to explore differences in - railways in this case, as it was navies with Tarrantry?

 

[Ofaloaf]

So Ruhnia is the Austro-Hungarian equivalent of Tarrantry then? Country invented purely to explore differences in - railways in this case, as it was navies with Tarrantry?

A brief Google search suggests that yes, Ruhnia is similar to Tarrantry in that role. Unlike Tarrantry, though, Ruhnia's actual location seems to be much more ill-defined. The best I could find was a route map, which is pretty rotten in terms of defining geography.

Gonna shoot the author an e-mail and invite him out here-- he's certainly made a good effort at plausibly fleshing out the railroads.

 

[Molewood6]

RSR

Many thanks to you all for your interest in the RSR. The site does, I must admit, evince anomalies and omissions in the history and geography of Ruhnia. There are several reasons for this. But first, if you will bear with me, some background information would not go amiss.

The first stage of the fantasy was the language. The idea of a fictitious language was inspired on the one hand by an article in a kids' comic I'd been reading, all about secret codes etc, and on the other by the unknown language reportedly spoken by Captain Nemo and his crew aboard the Nautilus. Because I was at this time interested in Czechoslovakia and the Czech language, Ruhnian took on many aspects of Czech spelling and (to a lesser degree) pronunciation. The grammar is of typically eastern European complexity.

Then came the locomotives, which make up the bulk of the site's material. In 1969 or 1970 I saw, in C. Hamilton Ellis's Illustrated Encyclopaedia, a picture of a Hungarian tandem compound 4-4-0, which, according to Ellis, would in the 1890s "loaf along with the Orient Express". Parallel to that were the writings of R.C. Bond and others on their work for the latter-day LMS. These supplied the first inspiration for the locomotive designs.

Only when there was a language and a collection of self-conceived locomotives did the need arise for (a) a fictitious country and (b) its railway adminstration.

Because of the dual monarchy heritage of that old 4-4-0, it seemed natural to locate the country where it would have a KuK-inspired style of locomotive design and linguistic influences from Slavonic speaking neighbours. Hence the virtual location between Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia (now, of course, the Czech Republic).

The geography of Ruhnia bears no relationship whatsoever to the real topography of the Bavarian and Bohemian Forests, nor to the lowlands bordering them. However, lines crossing the borders do "lead" to real towns in the neighbouring countries; for example, beyond Tupfdu Rulauriku lies Passau and east of Fetihl and Zarpsi lies Plzen. This how the Warsaw-Rome express that crashed at Kalmorska in 1908 was routed. The route map published on the site has always been due for review but has never achieved the necessary level of priority.

The political history is even less well thought through, I must confess. Ruhnia must have been part of the dual monarchy to have been so sharply influenced by Dr Gölsdorf in its locomotive designs but at the same time would never actually have been allowed an independent design policy. Alone the total universal route availability demanded by the Austrian military would have ruled out the RSR's English levels of axle loading.

I would be grateful for any inspiration you can give me on the history side.

Regards and many thanks
Norman Clubb
RSR Works, Bevice-Akonicse