[thingie]

FRA as such isn't the problem. See, every European country has its own railway regulatory office, which is perfectly fine, but there is simply so little unification between the different countries, that international railway traffic between various EU countries is so painful, that it simply cannot stand in competition with the road freight. You can easily load your cargo on a truck and move it from Bulgaria to Scotland, but it's incredibly painful to do that on rail.

There are tons of various signalling systems, there are multiple electrification systems (even in a single country), there are different norms everywhere, various load gauges, available railway clearances… it's a HUGE mess. And it's expensive.

Some progress is being made, but of course, it doesn't get so easily through. ETCS (European Train Control System) is being developed and very slowly deployed, but only very slowly, it's expensive to equip a locomotive with it (more so than to put a multiple national signalling systems there) and you can use it on only very few lines. And you will never fix everything. Like, you are not going to rebuild every railway line in the UK to the continental clearance. Won't happen.

So, I don't think there is a problem in having a federal reguatory agency. The problem is that it's dysfunctional and nobody really cares. But not having anything like that is bad as well.

[yxhuvud]

There are even different track widths, with the russian system being wider than the most common standard.

[thingie]

Well, there isn't much of a passenger traffic to the Russia and back, there are facilities to handle the freight, it's an EU border (implying long legal procedures regardless of a transport mode) and the roads there aren't very good (in comparison). Baltic states and Finland lack connections to the rest of EU and again, it's mostly freight only. So it doesn't harm rail transport that much. Less obvious, but much worse problem is that there are incompatible axle loads and clearances, russian carriages are heavier and wider. Too much for the most of standard gauge lines.

Much funnier example of a country with multiple railway gauges is Spain. There are three widely used gauges…