[grkvlt]

so, how does this square with the statement claiming "[...] galaxies in the Local Group stay together" despite space-time expansion, since a galaxy seems rather larger than my proposed space-railway...

edit: also, thanks for the explanations - i think i need to learn more and/or head to physicsoverflow ;)

[542354234235]

Galaxies in the Local Group stay together because they are already gravitationally large enough and close enough to outweigh spacetime expansion. So, adding railways between them wouldn’t help or hurt. If you tried to add railways between galaxies that were not already gravitationally bound, they would keep moving apart and just tear the railway.

At the risk of adding yet another analogy. Imagine we have built an enormous balloon the size of a small moon. You and I are put on the balloon with our two vehicle and a steel winch. If they continue to blow up the balloon, things will get farther apart, but it isn’t going to tear the front times from the ear tires, and if we put the cars 1 meter apart, and connected the steel winch cable, it wouldn’t be an issue. At 1 meter, the balloon is expanding by a centimeter an hour. But if you drove 150 kilometers away from me, with the cable connected, and we tried to hold them together at the same distance, the balloon is moving at 25 meters per minute. To each of us, things would look and feel normal, but the pressure on the cable would snap it immediately. If you then decided to keep driving, there would be a point where you could never drive back to me because the distance between us as the balloon was expanding, would be more than the top speed of your car.