>>17912181
The Industrial Revolution began in England and spread across the English speaking world first. Then it spread to places that were French speaking and German speaking because they lived in proximity to England. Spain, Italy and Russia were all farther away from England and so industrialized much slower. Even then Spain and Italy are much smaller than Russia so for the same length of rail laid in each country the benefits are going to larger in a smaller country because the rail links a higher percentage of the population together. Russia is huge, so a huge amount of rail needs to be laid to actually link the whole country together. That all requires iron mines and coal plants, more industries that have to be created and organized using the latest English technology and methods.

Meanwhile a random English guy could go over to America and start a company from scratch.