That is a weird assertion, considering a victory for the Confederacy would have likely meant their independence, not taking over the North. Wouldn't a Confederate victory make the remaining Union states' options on standardizing easier?
By the Civil War, it looks like you have a Midwestern standard gauge, a Northeast standard gauge separated into two islands by a I think 5'6" New York/New Jersey gauge, and Ohio using a 4'10" gauge separating these two networks; the South's network--which is far less dense--is 5' gauge; and now you get transcontinental railroads being planned for a 4'8½" gauge. Now it is true that the Southern railroads largely switched to the 5' gauge as a result of connecting to the original few lines that connected isolated lines being 5', but a similar process in the North also broke up the non-standard gauge areas, and between the much smaller track area of the South and the fact that there were almost no 5' lines outside of the CSA, it is incredibly unlikely that the creeping 5' would ever have been adopted in the US.
(From attempting to browse the Confederacy's laws, I don't think they ever fixed a gauge for the routes they authorized to be completed).
At any rate, I’ve had occasion to cross the Poland-Belarus border by train and while you’re in the carriage they lift it several feet in the air and change bogies over the course of a couple of hours. At least a number of years ago when I did it. At the time, it was said in years gone by the authorities would conceal the passenger view during the procedure.
I wonder if there remain many “live bogie” changing locations in operation around the world?
Recently in the news as the UK government rail minister appeared to have directly requested he be sacked from the (private) company he worked at, after (pre-cleared with said company) comments he made to media about Euston station safety during peak times [0].
0: https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-rail-minister-peter-hendy...
Obviously people just love simple explanations and latching onto goofy conspiracies though are going to love drawing a straight line between any two points.
Well, the half inch is accounted for , but not the original 5' plateway.
Or put more succinctly:
The original meme: 4'8½" exists because exact replica of Romans.
The truth: As laid it, it was originally exactly 5'. But we changed what we use to measure gauge, so it's now reported as 4'8". Stephenson changed that to 4'8½" because that allowed him to fix a problem he had without having to replace anything.
And honestly, "cheap engineering fix" is a more interesting explanation to a conundrum than "Romans."