[HN Gopher] Finland announces migration of its rail network to i...
___________________________________________________________________
Finland announces migration of its rail network to international
gauge
Author : axelfontaine
Score : 420 points
Date : 2025-05-20 07:40 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (yle.fi)
(TXT) w3m dump (yle.fi)
| thih9 wrote:
| > will cost billions of euros, affect more than 9,200 km of
| track, and take decades
|
| How is a change like this going to be implemented? E.g. are they
| going to mainly update some tracks everywhere (and have two
| systems running in parallel), or all tracks in selected areas
| (and have passengers change), or something else?
|
| Was there a comparable large scale rail infrastructure change in
| some other country?
| russellbeattie wrote:
| > _" Planning will continue until the end of the decade, and
| maybe in 2032 we can start construction."_
|
| Check back in in a few years and all your questions will be
| answered.
| gspr wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_gauge
| anticodon wrote:
| > Was there a comparable large scale rail infrastructure change
| in some other country?
|
| Baltic states attempted this (project Rail Baltica). Lots of EU
| money were spent with no visible result. I guess, several
| people in Baltic states became super rich, but in terms of rail
| infrastructure nothing was done.
| stuaxo wrote:
| This is an ongoing project, not a past project though ?
|
| I thought this is a project for a new railway, not reguaging
| existing track ?
| concerned_user wrote:
| Correct it is a new rail line not an alteration of existing
| tracks, but it goes into some existing and new (mostly
| cargo) stations so some stations will have both gauges of
| track.
| Sloowms wrote:
| No visible result is the goal. The change is minimal but
| makes the system compatible with other EU carriages. Did the
| Baltics attempt this or succeed?
| greggsy wrote:
| They're clearly referring to economic results.
| concerned_user wrote:
| It is ongoing project but there doesn't seem to me enough
| financing, the money that EU allocates only cover about
| half of the required budget so they are looking for
| investors.
| cromulent wrote:
| Progress has been made and is ongoing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_Baltica#Project_progress
| ta1243 wrote:
| American libertarians are the new "Useful Idiots" when it
| comes to Russia, just like the left was in the 70s.
| anticodon wrote:
| I've read your link. Where's the actual progress?
|
| But billions of euros has already been spent.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yes, that's how things work. You spend money on projects
| before their completion, just like you buy ingredients
| for dinner before a meal arrives on your plate.
|
| I imagine you're looking for the subheadings titled
| "completed in 2015" and "construction (2017-present)"
| though.
| anticodon wrote:
| Today is 2025. Rail Baltica started in 2013.
|
| Yes, I understand very well that "research" is a pipe,
| where you put billions of euros in one end, and get stack
| of papers on the other end. And somebody becomes rich in
| the process. Sapienti sat.
| rmind wrote:
| You are counting from some early planning phases.
| Compare, for example, how long it took for the UK to
| build High Speed 1 line.
|
| It's worth noting that the non-HS standard gauge (part of
| Rail Baltica I) between Poland and Lithuania (up to
| Sestokai Intermodal Terminal) was completed back in 2015.
| The freight trains have been operating on this line all
| the time.
| tekla wrote:
| I doubt you've read the link since there are 3 sub-
| headers that explain the progress.
| rmind wrote:
| The work is very much ongoing in Lithuania: 114 km of railway
| is under construction, with tracks already laid in large
| parts of it. That is 43% of the initial phase (links to
| Poland and Latvia).
|
| Let's keep in mind that it's not just standard gauge track.
| It's a high-speed rail project (200-250 km/h) and, for any
| country, it takes time to build such a huge infrastructure.
| euroderf wrote:
| I've read that (not tracks but) stations are the sources of
| big overruns for Rail Baltica.
| hapidjus wrote:
| I think you can "upgrade" the tracks to use three rails so you
| can handle both track widths. Also there are trains with
| adjustabe axle widths.
| cluckindan wrote:
| Not possible here because the widths are too close together
| to install a third rail.
| pjerem wrote:
| Given the small difference, maybe the easiest option is to
| "just" update the wheel axles of the entire fleet in the
| same time and at the same speed as the tracks.
|
| Wheels are anyway wearing parts and are to be changed
| periodically.
|
| BTW, I'm just speculating out loud.
| Sharlin wrote:
| You'd need four rails, a 9 cm separation isn't enough to fit
| two side by side. This solution has been ruled out as
| technically infeasible (I don't even want to _think_ about
| what the switches would look like...)
|
| Adjustable-gauge rolling stock has also been ruled out as
| incompatible with the Finnish climate.
|
| The most (only?) feasible way to do it is to "simply" build
| entirely new standard-gauge track next to existing track (and
| then possibly start upgrading the latter too at some point in
| the future).
| greatpatton wrote:
| Adjustable-gauge are used in Switzerland for a mountain
| line (Montreux-Interlaken) all through the year. I have
| never seen temperature issue mentioned.
| https://www.gpx.swiss/en/stories/technology (the video is
| rather cool)
| janfoeh wrote:
| That _is_ cool, thanks for posting!
| Sharlin wrote:
| Nevertheless that's what the initial feasibility studies
| showed. I don't think the amount of complexity involved
| in that Swiss system would scale _at all_.
| vincnetas wrote:
| This reminded me about a joke.
|
| When engineers asked should we do the rails same width like
| in europe or wider, the answer they got from tzar was
| "Nakhui shire"
|
| literal translation "wider by length of dick, but meaning
| "why the fuck we need wider"
|
| - V Evrope shirina kolei 1435 millimetrov. Nam delat' tak
| zhe ili shire? - Nakhui shire, - otvetil imperator.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Sounds like a variation on the "Tsar's finger" anecdote
|
| https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/580-the-legend-of-the-
| tsar...
| nottorp wrote:
| Wikipedia says 1435 and 1524 are too close for triple rail,
| you have to do quadruple.
| Stevvo wrote:
| Part of the motivation is removing the Russian gauge rails
| such that they can't be used in the case of invasion, so I
| don't think dual-gauge is really an option here.
| yevgeby wrote:
| There are several options nowadays. For instance, the Spanish
| train maker Talgo holds many patents for variable-gauge
| railroad wheel systems. Such systems can be used at scale for
| large projects. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_gauge
| andriamanitra wrote:
| Currently the leading plan is to build another narrower track
| alongside the existing ones (so the old trains can keep
| operating), but it is still in the planning phase. [1] I am not
| convinced this project is ever going to pay for itself. I feel
| like you could move cargo from one train to another somewhere
| near the border for quite a long time with the money it is
| going to take to convert the entire rail network. Finland is
| only connected to Sweden and Norway by land in the North so
| it's not really going to connect the Finnish rail network to
| Europe either (unless the Helsinki-Tallinn tunnel [2] gets
| built, but it does not seem likely at this time).
|
| [1] https://yle.fi/a/74-20161793
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki%E2%80%93Tallinn_Tunne...
| pjc50 wrote:
| > I am not convinced this project is ever going to pay for
| itself.
|
| The subtext is not economic: it's "in the event of being
| invaded by Russia, can we minimize the delays in moving NATO
| materiel by rail to the front while denying Russia equally
| easy access to the rails".
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| Assuming Russia waits 30-50 years until Finland has new
| tracks :))
| pjc50 wrote:
| Well, the last Russian invasion of Finland was over 80
| years ago, and presumably Russia will continue to exist
| in some form..
| IAmBroom wrote:
| It will take that long for them to replace their military
| stockpiles.
|
| The silver lining in the horrific invasion of Ukraine is
| that the Russian bear's belly is not just exposed, but
| raw from shaving nicks.
|
| Granted, it still takes a lot to kill a bear - but the
| West only wants deterrence, not occupation of Russia.
| andriamanitra wrote:
| I understand that but it is still economic: I highly doubt
| fixing a minor delay in material movement is the most
| effective use of these billions.
| arnsholt wrote:
| I don't think it's a minor delay. In other places where
| gauge changes are necessary, I think it typically takes
| on the order of an hour or a few hours, so if you need a
| big logistics operation across the border from Sweden
| into Finland, that bottleneck is going to absolutely
| murder your throughput.
| andriamanitra wrote:
| I hadn't considered throughput but that's a good point.
| Under normal circumstances even a few hours is
| meaningless but if you need to get lots of trains across
| the border in a short span of time it starts to
| accumulate.
| bluGill wrote:
| The land border between Sweden and Finland is in the far
| north where few people live. It would be preferred to not
| do switches there because that means you need to
| build/maintain a town for all the needed workers (and
| families), and said town won't provide much opportunities
| for any other jobs. In short if you must switch gauges
| you really want to to be in a smaller city (maybe 100k
| people) that has other reason to exist so you have a pool
| of people to hire, who have other reasons to live there
| and thus have family there.
| lukan wrote:
| It is not a minor delay and in case of war such a delay
| can easily cost billions.
|
| And if there isn't a war, the benefits of a
| interconnected and integrated european railwail network
| are potentially huge. 300 km/h trains connecting Finnland
| with Spain with no delay or bumps? That would be
| something.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > 300 km/h trains connecting Finnland with Spain with no
| delay or bumps?
|
| Bit tricky this: either you cross the Baltic by ferry and
| resume at Tallinn, or you have to go a long way round
| north from Helsinki and come down again through Sweden,
| across Oresund and through Denmark.
| Akronymus wrote:
| Couldn't they build something similar to the eurotunnel
| but with denmark and sweden?
| lukan wrote:
| There is a bridge.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98resund_Bridge
|
| And more tunnels are getting build.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fehmarn_Belt_fixed_link
| Akronymus wrote:
| Oh. I should've looked it up before making a statement on
| it. My apologies and thanks for the correction.
| yencabulator wrote:
| That bridge is going to be incredibly easy to destroy,
| should a big enough country wish that. And it definitely
| isn't going to be rebuilt quickly enough to matter for a
| war.
| lukan wrote:
| With nukes, you can destroy anything. Otherwise the kerch
| bridge is still standing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_Bridge
| yencabulator wrote:
| Russia does not want that bridge to fall. Ukraine likely
| does but wasn't able to execute (outside of artillery
| range by now, limited access to long-range missiles,
| utter lack of sea power in the area, failure to
| anticipate circumstances enough to take it out while they
| still had control over area). All other countries are
| trying to not get involved, including not selling Ukraine
| (many) long-distance high destructive power missiles.
|
| I wouldn't generalize from that to "nobody could destroy
| a bridge".
| lukan wrote:
| Yeah, I meant the northern way, but a tunnel into the
| baltics, or a normal, peaceful landconnection over
| St.Petersburg would of course make more sense for
| connecting Helsinki. Or connecting Helsinki with
| Stockholm via Aland.
|
| All nice concepts. All quite expensive obviously.
|
| https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/03/08/will-a-bridge-
| acros...
|
| https://ferryshippingnews.com/aland-islands-tunnel-is-
| back-o...
| yencabulator wrote:
| > 300 km/h trains connecting Finnland with Spain with no
| delay or bumps?
|
| Have you seen a map of the region?
| Geee wrote:
| Estonia / Eastern Europe uses the Russian gauge.
| andriamanitra wrote:
| Rail Baltica will connect the Baltics to European rail
| network using 1435mm gauge. It is scheduled to be fully
| operational in 2030.
| euroderf wrote:
| The idea for the Baltics is that east-west lines can remain
| Russian gauge but north-south lines (esp. new ones) are
| European gauge.
|
| Discussions of a Helsinki-Tallinn tunnel suggest that
| Finland would at least lay European gauge tracks to Espoo
| and Helsinki-Vantaa airport, and maybe also to Tampere.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The Helsinki-Tallinn tunnel would be expensive, but in the
| current climate of hostilities with Russia, the EU could
| support it just to make a point.
|
| It would also enable high-speed services from Finland to
| Central Europe - Rail Baltica to Tallinn is currently being
| built, so Helsinki-Warsaw could be a plausible connection,
| doable in less than 8 hours. (More than ideal, but trains
| that run for 8 hours from one end of their journey to another
| are commonplace in Central Europe.)
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| In Spain it's ongoing, very slowly, since the first
| international gauge high-speed rail line started operation in
| 1992.
|
| It's a slow and quite annoying process. For example, to reach
| my region, trains from Madrid have to change gauge because my
| region still has the old one. Apart from spending around 10
| minutes doing this, this has caused a lot of problems because
| it essentially means there is a single model of 300 km/h train
| that can make it here (others don't support gauge change) and
| to top it, said model turned out to be highly unreliable. This
| created a lot of political tension because of course we wanted
| 300 km/h trains like other regions, but now we're stuck with
| these lemons and our regional politicians push for gauge
| change, but the national government doesn't want to do it yet
| as it affects freight trains.
|
| I hope at some point we get the change done in the whole
| national network, although generally it moves at a glacial
| pace. It makes sense to have seamless connection with France
| and the rest of Europe, and to be able to use the same trains
| everyone else does.
| RileyJames wrote:
| You lost me at 'single model of 300km/h train that can make
| it here'
|
| Meanwhile here in Australia our "fast rail" trains go
| 160km/h. Unless it's over 32 degrees, then they slow down.
| And if it hits 36 degrees they slow down even more (90km/h)
|
| And it gets that hot here a lot...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V/Line_VLocity
|
| https://www.vline.com.au/heat
| john-h-k wrote:
| Don't OBB Railjet trains travel at 230km/h?
| detaro wrote:
| Australia, not Austria ;)
| Akronymus wrote:
| I can count on one hand how often I've seen that mixup
| happen in that direction.
|
| As an austrian, I am amused.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Is it Austria that has the stands in the airport for
| tourists who thought they were buying tickets to
| Australia, or is it the other way around?
| Akronymus wrote:
| I am not familiar enough with air travel that I can say
| either way.
|
| But austria and australia regularily exchange mail that
| got sent to the wrong country.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| I think it's a myth that originated from an ad: https://w
| ww.vol.at/2023/11/397526796_1104257417472438_811840...
|
| I suppose it's difficult to make that mistake because
| plane tickets are to cities, not countries as a whole.
|
| As a real story, I knew a guy who had a B&B near a beach
| called San Francisco, in Spain, and he regularly had to
| cancel bookings from people who thought it was in the US
| city of the same name, though :)
| thih9 wrote:
| Apparently people confuse cities when flying too, here's
| an article about a passenger going to the wrong Sydney,
| and more examples:
|
| https://simpleflying.com/ameican-airlines-passenger-
| flies-si...
| john-h-k wrote:
| Wow not even a verbal slip up I literally read Australia
| as Austria. Equally impressed and horrified with myself
| danielovichdk wrote:
| I wonder if those trains was imported from Italy ? During the
| Danish transition to IC-4 some of those trains ended up with
| Gaddafi in Libiya
| (https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2021/02/this-was-gaddafis-
| pers...)
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| No, they're Spanish trains: the Talgo Avril
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talgo_AVRIL,
| https://youtu.be/6iFfVpZwLJ4?si=ahxuQnauNw1-ucqR). It's a
| model specifically designed for that.
|
| As an armchair expert, I think it turned out badly because
| they had to develop cutting-edge technology (no trains with
| that top speed and support for gauge change existed before,
| and it also has other quirks, like being uncommonly wide to
| support five seats per row) but, at the same time, make it
| very cheap (the project started in the context of harsh
| austerity in the years after the financial crisis, with
| PIGS accused of overspending, etc.). They promised too much
| for the budget and ended up delivering a half-baked train.
| At the beginning, a year ago, it was a disaster (lots of
| incidents with trains stopping mid-way, etc.), now they
| seem to be ironing out the problems and things are getting
| better but they're still much more unreliable than other
| trains.
|
| I hope at least the lessons learned help towards making a
| better model in the future.
| stuaxo wrote:
| Does that train have the British Advanced Passenger Train
| in it's ancestory? The carriage shape that is narrower at
| the top looks familiar.
| jabl wrote:
| In 1886 the USA switched the rail gauge of the southern states
| to standard gauge. Most of the work was done over two days.
|
| http://southern.railfan.net/ties/1966/66-8/gauge.html
|
| Obviously doing this today would be a much more complicated
| affair, considering the much higher speeds and weights of
| contemporary trains.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| If you want to, you can do it fairly fast. The decades plan
| is nonsense. It cannot take decades to change tracks,
| especially since the size of the rail network is quite small.
| xattt wrote:
| Toronto has 83 km of TTC-gauge streetcar track. 99% of it
| is set in concrete. This would take a little longer than 2
| days.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| If you want to nitpick about some corner case, go ahead.
|
| I have this feeling that Finland's railway tracks are not
| set in concrete at street level ;)
| iggldiggl wrote:
| But they are set into prefabricated concrete sleepers,
| which cannot be modified to a new track gauge and instead
| need to be swapped out completely. Whereas during the US
| gauge change, the railways used wooden sleepers, with the
| rails fastened simply with nails hammered into the
| sleepers, so it was simply a matter of pulling out the
| nails and hammering them in again at the new track gauge.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| There are machines these days that change sleepers
| automatically. I do not know if they do gauge conversion,
| but changing track (meaning replacing old one) and
| sleepers nowadays is fully automated.
|
| I imagine running a machine in reverse, removing the
| track and changing sleepers and one moving forward at the
| same time installing the new track only. Or have one
| remove the old sleepers and track and and another one
| installing new sleepers and track (imagine building new
| track kind of operation).
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Yes, those kind of track relaying machines exist, and
| they could most likely be adapted to work for the gauge
| change (one end of the machine would have to be set up
| for broad gauge and the other end for standard gauge),
| but they still manage only a few kilometres of track per
| day, and they're comparatively rare and expensive -
| basically there are only enough of them around for the
| amount of track relaying required during routine
| maintenance.
|
| So repeats of the famous 19th century gauge change by
| converting large swathes of the network in just a few
| days (thousands of miles of track as in the US in 1886,
| or even just the 177 miles west of Exeter in the UK in
| 1892) remain rather unlikely.
| bluGill wrote:
| The decades are planning so the process happens fast. There
| is a lot that needs to happen correctly to do this fast.
|
| I could personally switch a track guage - but it would be
| multiple days per km of track switched, if you trained me
| on how to do this I could do it much faster (I have no idea
| how much faster, but faster). Train a lot of people like me
| and it is faster. Or you could buy machines.
|
| We also need to switch all the train wheels, again, not
| hard - but not something an untrained person can do
| quickly.
|
| Most likely a large part of the process is finding other
| railroads around the world that have the needed equipment
| that will let them borrow it for a few months (most of
| which time spent in shipping not using the machines.) there
| are a lot of railroads with old machines they keep for
| emergency use that can be pressed into use. There are
| railroads thinking about buying a new machine that would
| make the order now (with the options Finland needs) if
| Finland contributes on the understanding Finland gets it
| for a few months...
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This is a lot easier to do with wooden sleepers than with
| concrete ones. You can drive new nails into wooden sleepers
| almost at will, so you can keep the sleepers in place and
| "just" move one rail to a different position. Concrete
| sleepers have pre-fabricated holes for the indicated gauge,
| which means replacing them.
|
| German soldiers re-gauged Soviet railways on a very short
| notice too when Barbarossa started.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Most of the work was _not_ done over two days, it says they
| did a bunch of prep work before the two days to minimize the
| downtime, and besides being done within two _years_ they didn
| 't specify how long the prep work.
|
| As the Finns will presumably not permit Russia to do prep
| work on the rails in advance of their invasion, they'll have
| to do all that prep work after the invasion. The article
| doesn't say how long that two years of prep would actually
| take if needed ASAP, but if it would take a month then the
| Finns would have a huge boon.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > Was there a comparable large scale rail infrastructure change
| in some other country?
|
| There were a number of gauge changes, but they were usually
| quite early on, when the infra was less critical and you could
| get away with closing lines for months. I'm not sure that
| there's a real 20th century example, beyond standard gauge high
| speed alongside non-standard normal-speed (for instance see
| Spain, and likely soon Ireland).
| padjo wrote:
| What leads you to believe Ireland will introduce standard
| gauge?
| rsynnott wrote:
| If the proposed Cork-Dublin-Belfast high speed line (the
| 300km/h one, not to be confused with Irish Rail's _other_
| more short-term project to bring Dublin-Cork to 200km/h
| standard, which will use the existing line) goes ahead,
| it'll almost certainly be a new standard gauge line,
| separate from the existing ones. Huge 'if', of course.
| marcthe12 wrote:
| India had a meter gauge to broad gauge but India was always a
| mix and India did a very slow transition to standardize on
| broad gauge which kinda smoothen stuff quiet a bit
| iggldiggl wrote:
| > There were a number of gauge changes, but they were usually
| quite early on, when the infra was less critical and you
| could get away with closing lines for months.
|
| It was also a time when railways used wooden sleepers, so you
| could simply drill new holes at the new track gauge for
| moving the rail fasteners, thereby minimising the work
| required for changing the gauge, at least on the plain line,
| switches and crossings excepted.
|
| Plus it was a time when a lot more manpower for that kind of
| massive manual work was available, plus railways were the
| dominant transport mode and could actually commandeer that
| kind of manpower.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| North Korea !
|
| That article has a short paragraph mentioning it:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44033310
| dotancohen wrote:
| > Was there a comparable large scale rail infrastructure change
| in some other country?
|
| Another large scale infrastructure change right in Finland (or
| was it Sweden?) was the switch from driving on the left hand
| side of the road to the right hand side of the road. They
| actually had local citizens one night dig up street signs and
| move them to the other side of the street.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| They'll probably go line by line.
|
| Here's a helpful overview from wikipedia:
| https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Finnish_railroad_netwo...
|
| I'm not sure how complete & up to date that is. But up north
| where the borders with Sweden and Norway are there isn't a
| whole lot of rail it seems. Norway's rail network doesn't
| extend that far. But Sweden gets pretty close to the Finnish
| border. I'm guessing a priority would be first connecting to
| their rail networks and then providing progressively more
| access to industrial hubs and eventually regional hubs.
|
| This might also help with freight to the rest of Europe.
| Currently the only way into the country for freight is by ship
| (ferries, containers) or by road via northern Sweden. Sweden
| has decent north south rail connections and a bridge to
| Denmark. So extending coastal rail to Oulu would allow access
| to the rest of Finland for freight trains.
|
| Just some thoughts.
| bluGill wrote:
| Problem with line by line is you need to have gauge switching
| systems someplace - line be line means you are moving all
| that.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| The need for that is pretty much a given with this change.
| I don't think it's avoidable.
| bluGill wrote:
| While not completely avoidable, it is partially avoidable
| if you carefully plan. Moving all your gauge change
| equipment is expensive, so if you can avoid one that is
| worth a lot.
|
| There are a lot of options and I expect those planning
| this to look into all the details to figure out what they
| can do.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| I wonder if there will be measures for backwards compatibility in
| the transition period. Like having dual track widths.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| There's only 89mm difference between the two widths - I'd guess
| that isn't enough room to have both on the same track.
| M95D wrote:
| This is how it looks (Galati, Romania):
|
| https://greatnews.ro/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/linia-
| ferata...
| HPsquared wrote:
| I can only imagine what the switches look like.
| Akronymus wrote:
| I believe something like this: https://www.reddit.com/med
| ia?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F8...
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| There's already some dual-gauge track on the border with
| Sweden in Haparanda/Tornio[1].
|
| [1]: https://maps.app.goo.gl/qjRZTz3K9sbVYpDX6
| Sharlin wrote:
| The only feasible way to do this (based on preliminary reports)
| is to simply build new track next to old track in the same
| right-of-way. The transition period would last decades.
| M95D wrote:
| I very much doubt it. Change to dual-gauge requires replacing
| the sleepers, and if they do the very hard work of replacing
| the sleepers, then why keep broad gauge?
|
| Maybe they would choose to downgrade a single track where
| there's two, and half of each station's lines, but that would
| make it very difficult to schedule trains in both directions on
| a single track. So, they're probably not going to do that
| either.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Just note Finland uses the Tsarist Russian 1524 mm gauge. Not the
| Allied Soviet 1520 mm gauge.
| freetonik wrote:
| Interesting. In practice they seem compatible? There were
| frequent trains running between Helsinki and Saint Petersburg,
| I remember taking it and there was a seamless transition across
| the border.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Yes it is in tolerances. But the specification is different.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Allegro train had 1522 wheelsets, effectively built for a
| non-existent gauge
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VR_Class_Sm6
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_ft_and_1520_mm_gauge_railway.
| ..
| jabl wrote:
| Not incidentally, 1524mm is exactly 5 feet. Which was the rail
| gauge widely used in the southern US states. The Russian tsar
| hired someone who had been building railroads in the US south
| to design his railroad, and here we are.
|
| The 1520mm was some Soviet effort to "metrify" their railways
| while keeping compatibility with existing rolling stock.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I wonder if they actually made new trains etc 4mm smaller, or
| if it was in name only.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| If I recall correctly, the rolling stock remained the same,
| tracks were re-railed and the 4mm came from tolerances that
| were historically very loose. So the stated goal was to get
| higher speed and stability from tighter tolerances.
|
| I also remember reading a long time ago that there were two
| engineering schools: one modeled that tighter tolerances
| would decrease oscillations and vibrations and the other
| predicted exactly the opposite. I think in the end they
| settled on natural experiments. Hope I didn't make this up,
| need to search for sources.
| troupo wrote:
| For those who don't know, there's a whole system alongside the
| eastern post-Soviet border: you arrive on a train, all the
| carriages are lifted and fitted with proper wheels.
|
| In the poorer countries like my home country these look like
| this:
| https://dmitriid.com/media/1/3/7/1/f50f-720b-4f59-873a-75c51...
| (article: https://dmitriid.com/romania-2023-chisinau-bucharest)
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Slightly more indepth article, with links to some background:
| https://yle.fi/a/74-20161606
| vesinisa wrote:
| Here's a much better article from the Finnish public broadcaster
| giving more context: https://yle.fi/a/74-20161606
|
| My comments:
|
| The important thing to note that at this point it's just a
| political posturing and an announcement of intent. They haven't
| shown any concrete technical plan how this would actually be
| executed.
|
| > "Of course, we are very pragmatic and realistic, we cannot do
| this in five years. Planning will continue until the end of the
| decade, and maybe in 2032 we can start construction."
|
| Once they have the cost estimates and effects on existing rail
| traffic studied, I bet construction will never start.
| Vinnl wrote:
| To be fair, if we imagine a future in which this _did_ happen,
| the start would _also_ look like this, so who knows.
| cladopa wrote:
| >Once they have the cost estimates and effects on existing rail
| traffic studied, I bet construction will never start.
|
| It is not that hard. Countries like Spain have already two
| different gauges and have the necessary technology in the
| trains to change between different systems.
| varsketiz wrote:
| One of the main goals of this is to not have the russian
| gauge available in case russians attack, so that logistics
| deeper into Finland cant happen easily with the same train,
| so backwards compatability is not desired.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| It's not like this results in a categorical difference in
| difficulty. Gauge switching infrastructure is common at
| borders. Yeah stopping and switching is slower than driving
| right through but it's not the end of the world in the long
| tail of military logistics.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Russian military logistics _heavily_ depend on trains,
| everything that can go on a train, does so. Flight and
| vehicle stuff is mostly an afterthought.
|
| Any hindrance we can put on the Finnish-Russian border to
| stop them just unloading 12 cars of fresh troops in the
| middle of the country is a good thing.
| paddy_m wrote:
| Another fun note about Russian logistics, they aren't
| palletized or mechanized. Thought being that cranes don't
| look good in parades. The train side seems smart or at
| least interesting, the pallets incredibly dumb.
|
| https://x.com/TrentTelenko/status/1507056013245128716
| jabl wrote:
| Why invest in forklifts, container infrastructure etc. if
| your military has a near-endless supply of uneducated
| conscripts you can order to shuffle around shells and
| other items?
|
| (Of course a more thorough analysis would probably come
| to the conclusion that better logistics is worth it.
| There's still an opportunity cost for those conscripts
| who could do something else instead, like dying in zerg
| rushes on the Ukrainian front. And even though those
| conscripts are 'free' they still require chow and a place
| to sleep etc.)
| smallstepforman wrote:
| " endless supply of uneducated conscripts "
|
| Now you're just being silly.
| bluGill wrote:
| Regardless of how much education they have - they are
| treated as uneducated.
| kranke155 wrote:
| This is a debunked post I think.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1507056013245128716.ht
| ml
|
| Your cite?
| celticninja wrote:
| i dont believe it is.
| paddy_m wrote:
| Trent and a lot of Ukranian war commentators have a habit
| of saying $X is catastrophic for the Russians (this is
| the worst on YouTube). Then those catastrophic things
| don't come to pass.
|
| Related, I have seen one guy, over and over say "Why
| isn't Ukraine hitting Russian electric train transformer
| stations". I don't have a good answer, most of Russia's
| rail network is electric, transformers blow up easily,
| there are many of them, and they would be very slow to
| replace. Ukraine clearly has deep strike capabilities,
| and Russia cant defend every transformer. I don't think
| it's a humanitarian issue, or at this point even an issue
| with the US telling Ukraine they can't hit those targets.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Transformers are not very hard to replace or make though.
| All they are is some copper wound around iron. It will
| just be some added frustration and annoyance for them but
| no gamechanger. If they start doing it a lot Russia will
| just build a bigger electrical workforce and more
| backstock. They have plenty of people and the
| authorianism to make them do whatever they want. It's
| just a pissing contest. Russia did lots of cyberattacks
| on the Ukrainian electrical network in the years before
| the invasion. Didn't do anything either but send a
| message.
|
| I would compare it to the Natanz cyber attack which
| reportedly cost a fortune and caused lots of business
| losses around the world. It only set the Iranian uranium
| refinement back a few percent.
|
| Then Obama comes and talks to them, strikes a deal. That
| solved the issue entirely and cost much less. Of course
| then Trump comes and messes it all up again but that's
| another story.
| celticninja wrote:
| Do you mean stuxnet? That was a cyber attack, natanz was
| a blackout caused by a blast/explosion IIRC.
| paddy_m wrote:
| Russia is importing shells from North Korea. Transformers
| are more complex than you give them credit for, and
| Russia has a very limited ability to manufacture
| anything, it would make a difference.
| celticninja wrote:
| Yeah sure, but it doesn't take away from the fact that
| the Russians do not use pallets for logistics and
| therefore struggle with logistics as a result.
|
| So I stand by my statement that his assessment is not
| wrong, even if it isn't as outcome changing as some may
| hope. It is however one of the many straws heaped upon
| the camel's back.
|
| As for the transformer issue, I would imagine that these
| are somewhat related. Their train based logistics are
| inefficient, so Ukraine doesn't need to stop the trains
| running. If they did the russians may find a more
| efficient solution.
| paddy_m wrote:
| Crippling the Russian train system would be very much
| worth it. Russia would have to switch to limited diesel
| locomotives, and it would really hurt regular civilian
| logistics in those areas.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Compare this to the completely bonkers logistics of the
| US Military: https://youtu.be/iIpPuJ_r8Xg
|
| Even Unicef has a massive logistics center in Denmark
| with pallets of stuff categorised and ready to be sent
| for any emergency:
| https://www.unicef.org/supply/warehousing-and-
| distribution
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Well yes but the US usually fights in faraway places to
| bring freedom (though the only thing they manage to
| 'liberate' is oil, see how Afghanistan and Iraq turned
| into hellholes as soon as they turned their backs)
|
| Russia just likes to kill the shit out of their
| neighbours which is a lot easier logistically.
| kibwen wrote:
| Gauge switching requires trains outfitted with
| specialized axles (increasing the cost to invade),
| requires trains to stop (increasing the train's
| vulnerability to attack), and requires switching stations
| which themselves are juicy targets and can't be repaired
| nearly as trivially as an ordinary length of rail.
| stuaxo wrote:
| It adds time for each train though.
| phkahler wrote:
| And if you're Russia wanting to invade Europe, it's
| better to do the Gauge switching right near your own
| border rather than on the far side of Finland. So while
| this may make it harder to invade Finland, it makes it
| easier to invade Europe as a whole.
| dcow wrote:
| This. I am struggling to see how this is anything other
| than posturing by politicians. It's hard to imagine this
| is strategy devised by military leaders.
| gbear605 wrote:
| The far side of Finland? That's the Baltic Sea. Sure,
| there's a little bit of Sweden, but it's so far north
| that there isn't much rail infrastructure there -
| certainly little enough that it could quickly be
| destroyed at the beginning of a war.
| andreasmetsala wrote:
| If the supply line is blown up at the beginning of the
| war then what was the point of switching gauges.
| dmurray wrote:
| The stated reason for the gauge change is "to remove
| technical obstacles to transporting troops and goods
| between Finland, Sweden and Norway".
|
| Those few connections in the sparse north of the country
| are the entire point.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| The objective they try to achieve is not to slow down
| Russia's invasion into Europe, but to stop them at the
| border by being able to move assets throughout Europe
| relatively quickly. If they gain a proper foothold and
| full access to "euro gauge" rails, it's a different
| fight.
|
| Of course, if it does go that far, tanks and trains can
| move rolling stock, rip up the tracks, blow up bridges
| and other infrastructure behind them if they're forced to
| retreat.
| dotancohen wrote:
| But if the Spanish can muster dual gauge trains, what's to
| prevent the Russians from doing the same? Or is the Finnish
| gauge a state secret?
| theshrike79 wrote:
| The difference between Finnish and Russian gauge is 4mm
|
| IIRC the diff to European standard is closer to 10cm,
| still doable but a hurdle compared to just driving a
| trainload of troops to the middle of Helsinki it's a bit
| harder
| dotancohen wrote:
| > The difference between Finnish and Russian gauge is 4mm
|
| What is the acceptable tolerance? It doesn't sound like a
| huge engineering effort to design a boogie compatible
| with both without requiring switching.
| anticensor wrote:
| Yes, the acceptable tolerance is -4mm+7mm.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Where? Finland specifically, or elsewhere? Both my local
| tram system in Germany as well as DB as the national
| infrastructure operator in Germany have construction
| tolerances of only +/- 2 mm. Maintenance tolerances on
| the other hand can be quite a bit larger, at least in the
| plus direction (on the order of 15/20/25 mm).
| lazide wrote:
| Sure, but thats Germans. I'm surprised it isn't specc'd
| in 10ths.
| anticensor wrote:
| They should've specced 1435mm+-410um, with no broadening
| at curves.
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| Train tracks are normally not precise to within 4mm
| anyway, and wheels are wide enough to tolerate that.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| > Train tracks are normally not precise to within 4mm
| anyway
|
| Yes they are. Of course practical tolerances including
| allowances for wear and there are large enough that
| things can be made to work, but in terms of nominal
| construction tolerances for example, 4 mm can easily eat
| up all your construction tolerances or even exceed them.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I obviously don't have a in depth knowledge of Finnish
| rail, but have you ever looked at rail in the US? I can
| show you tracks with completely missing ties. Tracks that
| move vertically by a foot when the train goes over them.
| Tracks that visually snake all over the place. The
| difference is made by slowing down the train. Derailment
| at 3 mph rarely matters. The biggest risk is the
| conductor doesn't know it happened & continues to drag
| the car along the tracks
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Sure, but even in the US that infrastructure state is
| usually only found on minor branch lines (shortlines),
| not on the main lines.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| There used to be a St.Pete-Helsinki high-speed train
| before the war, Allegro. It was built with bogies for a
| 1522mm gauge.
| T-A wrote:
| First sentence from the article: _The Finnish government
| has announced the conversion of its rail network from
| Russian gauge (1,524 mm) to European standard (1,435
| mm)._
|
| 1524 - 1435 = 89
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_ft_and_1520_mm_gauge_rail
| way...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard-gauge_railway
| ta1243 wrote:
| So "closer to 10cm" then
|
| Clearly not "doable", without guage changing bogies.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > what's to prevent
|
| Conceptually? Nothing.
|
| But building such trains, _at scale_ , takes a load of
| resources. Resources which could otherwise be used to
| build tanks, guns, missiles, and similar high-priority
| products.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Also:
|
| > what's to prevent
|
| Russian lack of logistical planning.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's less about what the Russians can do and more about
| how fast European and NATO countries can move assets to a
| potential invasion front line; as it stands, they're
| slowed down at the borders needing to switch to the
| different gauges.
| adrianmsmith wrote:
| > One of the main goals of this is to not have the russian
| gauge available in case russians attack
|
| This doesn't seem like it can be a goal given
|
| > maybe in 2032 we can start construction
|
| I mean unless the plan is to assume Russia won't attack
| until e.g. 2040 when construction will be complete &&
| Russia can't implement multi-gauge trains that Spain is
| already using now?
| kibwen wrote:
| Even if Russia's conquest of Ukraine were to end
| tomorrow, they would take a few years to recover before
| mounting their next offensive. And Finland isn't first in
| line on their list of next invasion targets, that would
| be either Georgia, Moldova, or the Baltics.
|
| And in any case, just as in computer security, a security
| posture does not need to be unassailable, it just needs
| to be expensive enough to deter the enemy. NATO countries
| (well, the ones that haven't already been compromised by
| Russia) will be happy to fund the gauge switch, as would
| the EU in general for the sake of greater economic
| integration. Meanwhile, it increases the costs on Russia
| and slows their advance. It's a win no matter what.
| vintermann wrote:
| Russia can't just attack anywhere it wants to. Putin is
| not Kim Il-sung, he can't count on any order to be
| blindly obeyed. It took years of propaganda,
| unfortunately armed with a couple of actually good points
| (mostly supplied by the neonazi nationalist wing in
| Ukraine, who wanted a war), before he could try actually
| invading. He had to walk a dangerous game with his own,
| in particular with his own neonazi supporter Prigozhin,
| who could easily have come up on top in their inevitable
| conflict.
|
| He's absolutely not harmless, but neither should we allow
| ourselves to be distracted by phony countermeasures
| against the Russian threat, like this gauge shift thing
| clearly is in my opinion.
| kibwen wrote:
| As you suggest, Russia's invasion of Ukraine was
| bolstered by Russian sympathizers in the east. Every
| country bordering Russia is incentivized to break free of
| any sort of alignment with Russia in order to reduce the
| threat of local insurgency which will aid Russia in its
| invasion. For example, the Baltic countries removing
| Russian from their list of official languages, in
| addition to decoupling from the Russian power grid. There
| are a lot of steps to be taken, and a lot of them will
| take decades. Fortunately, Russia's capacity to wage war
| measured against their number of potential targets means
| that it would take them decades to reconquer it all,
| assuming Europe steps up to fund the defense. Train gauge
| alignment is just one of many steps towards this end, and
| the sooner the better.
| vintermann wrote:
| The anti-Russian policies in the Baltics are dumb, they
| provide Putin with a good point to use in his propaganda,
| which is infinitely more useful to him than any railroad
| on foreign soil.
|
| He's co-opting the red army's defeat of Nazi Germany for
| his own popularity purposes. Which is impressive,
| considering he's also disavowing communism. It would
| hardly have been possible, if it weren't for fringe (but
| not fringe enough) movements in Eastern Europe playing
| along with it. Not because they're pro-Russian, far from
| it, but because their old nationalist groups often _were_
| aligned with the nazis, and they want to rehabilitate
| them. Putin and these groups totally agree that the
| conflict should be framed as being between Russia and
| these groups.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> The anti-Russian policies in the Baltics are dumb,
| they provide Putin with a good point to use in his
| propaganda_
|
| This is dangerously naive. Propagandists like Putin don't
| need real grievances, they're happy to invent grievances
| and brainwash the population into believing them. In
| light of this fact, there's zero downside and nonzero
| upside to decouple from Russia (at least for any state
| which intends to remain independent) which makes it a no-
| brainer.
| vintermann wrote:
| What you're really saying here, is that Russians are
| fundamentally different people than you, because they
| fall for any dumb propaganda, whereas you don't.
|
| Or maybe you accept that you are human too, vulnerable to
| the same thing, and maybe _you_ are the brainwashed one,
| but you don 't care?
|
| Going down either of these roads ends you up with the
| neonazis in the long run (and yes, Russia has a lot of
| them too).
|
| So no, it's not naive to point out the good points that
| feed the propaganda. What's naive is to think that
| dictators can manufacture good propaganda out of thin air
| anyway so it doesn't matter what "our side" is guilty of.
|
| Putin is a gangster, not a cult leader. He's in it for
| himself, the people around him are in it for themselves.
| No one thinks he's selfless, least of all regular Russian
| people. It takes effort to keep something like that
| together. Unfortunately, he gets help from his foreign
| enemies.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > What you're really saying here, is that Russians are
| fundamentally different people than you, because they
| fall for any dumb propaganda, whereas you don't.
|
| No, I don't read that at all. There's plenty of Russian
| propaganda that Westerners have fallen for hook, line,
| and sinker, chief among them the idea that all Russian
| speakers are actually Russian and want to be a part of
| the Russia.
|
| The point is that the propagandists don't need to base
| their propaganda on truth. A salient historical example
| here is actually World War II: the Germans tried to
| provoke Poland into overreacting and causing a major
| incident in Danzig to justify their invasion of Poland.
| The Poles refused to play ball, so when the appointed
| hour came, the Germans made up some atrocity and used it
| as the basis of the declaration of war, faking the
| evidence early in the invasion. Given that Russia has
| already used a similar pretext regarding Russian speakers
| in Ukraine, it's not a surprise that the Baltics are
| nervous about Russia doing the exact some thing with
| regards to Russian speakers in their territories.
| vintermann wrote:
| > No, I don't read that at all. There's plenty of Russian
| propaganda that Westerners have fallen for hook, line,
| and sinker, chief among them the idea that all Russian
| speakers are actually Russian and want to be a part of
| the Russia.
|
| Oh yeah, _other_ westerners, but not you. You take the
| foreign policy think tank line that Russians actually
| _want_ to be balkanized. Just after saying that Putin has
| succeeded in brainwashing the population to go along with
| whatever he wants without need for excuses based on good
| points.
| rmind wrote:
| "Removing Russian from their list of official languages"?
| It was never an official language in the first place.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| In the distant past of the 1990s, it was.
| nradov wrote:
| Right, under Soviet military occupation.
| hollerith wrote:
| There was no military occupation of Finland in the
| _1990s_.
| nradov wrote:
| A was referring to the Baltic countries, as per the
| comment from @kibwen above.
| hollerith wrote:
| Sorry, my bad.
| wbl wrote:
| "Do you have Russian soldiers in Finland?" "Yes, hundreds
| of thousands" "Where are they stationed?" "Along the
| border, six feet deep".
| rmind wrote:
| It was the case during the Soviet occupation and briefly
| during the transitional period, but otherwise - no, it
| wasn't. For example, in 1990, Latvia simply restored its
| 1922 constitution (still in effect today, although with
| some amendments) which enacted Latvian as the sole
| official language. This has also been the case with
| Lithuanian and Estonian constitutions, respectively.
| anonymars wrote:
| I think this overstates the challenges, especially given
| the last 10+ years of despots doing things they shouldn't
| just be able to do. Waking up one day to find that the US
| has invaded Canada is now a non-negligible possibility.
|
| I think they are up to the challenge of whipping up some
| BS casus belli and scaring would-be protesters into
| submission.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"Meanwhile, it increases the costs on Russia and slows
| their advance. It's a win no matter what."
|
| Following logic it also increases your own costs and
| wastes money that could've been allocated to produce
| weapons and other more effective preventive measures.
| kibwen wrote:
| Fortunately, a country can pursue many things
| simultaneously, which is often more generally effective
| than pursuing a single thing to the detriment of all
| others, thanks to diminishing returns.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"...than pursuing a single thing..."
|
| Where did I say about single thing: "...weapons and other
| more effective preventive measures..."
|
| Looking from the other angle - should Russia attack it'll
| trigger article 5. Russia can not win conventional war
| with NATO. It is just laughable. They're not that
| suicidal. And if they are it'll escalate to nuclear and
| then the railroad will be your last worry.
| wbl wrote:
| Russia can however win the US dithering, western Europe
| being scared of cruise missile strikes while their
| propagandists ask if it's worth dying for a few little
| towns.
|
| We need to have resolve!
| kibwen wrote:
| _> Russia can not win conventional war with NATO_
|
| Without the US Navy, NATO loses any war in the Baltic
| Sea. If Putin thinks the US won't respect Article 5, then
| he'll attack anyway. And if the US Navy is annihilated in
| a war against China, he'll attack anyway. Finland needs
| all the separation from Russia it can get.
| celticninja wrote:
| there are economic benefits to closer integration with
| the EU that the weapons would not provide.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Given the disaster that is the Ukrainian invasion, this
| doesn't really hold true. As long as leadership is OK
| with a total logistical clusterfuck, you don't need to
| worry about "years to recover" for your next offensive.
| The next offensive starts today. You can figure out the
| details as you go.
| vintermann wrote:
| Like most such things, it's probably mostly symbolic, so
| politicians can say they're doing something in defiance
| of Russia (which is a very popular thing to do in Finland
| right now, or most of the west for that matter). I guess
| they'll back down on it when by 2032, everyone realizes
| it doesn't matter since wars will be fought with small
| autonomous drones and any railroad would be sabotaged in
| an instant.
| Retric wrote:
| What kind of ranges are you expecting from these small
| drones so logistics suddenly doesn't matter? Even if
| something can hypothetically travel thousands of miles,
| designing disposable weapons with that kind of range has
| a real cost.
| vintermann wrote:
| Sure, logistics matter. I'm sure Russian-gauge railroads
| in Finland would be mildly convenient for invading
| Sweden, provided you can first invade and utterly defeat
| Finland quickly enough that the railways survive.
|
| But if Putin could do that (he can't), railway gauges
| would be the least of our worries.
| Retric wrote:
| So the drone bit was a non sequitur.
|
| As to railways surviving it's relatively difficult to
| effectively destroy rail infrastructure. Making the call
| to cripple your internal infrastructure is tough
| especially in such a dire situation, it's also a really
| large target. Taking out some strategic bridges is easier
| but most local issues can be quickly fixed when you
| talking million men armies.
| culopatin wrote:
| Wouldn't it be simpler to make a "train moat" by
| disconnecting rails from Russia? Or would they run the
| trains on dirt for a mile and re attach?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Building temporary bridges in wartime is pretty normal.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Always loved going over the border from France as a kid and
| they would lift the whole train up and slide the old wheels
| out and put the new ones in and off you go!
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Or they will start with a few of the most important lines that
| connect the countries and ports.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| That was the plan, one rail that can go from somewhere in
| Finland all the way to central Europe without stopping to
| change rail gauges.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| See also: Rail Baltica
|
| These projects are sloooooooow
| oblio wrote:
| Fear of a foreign invasion by a country much larger than your,
| and one that occupied you once for 200 years and attacked you
| again just 20 years after independence tends to clear the mind.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Crazy thing is, I don't live in Finland yet this description
| could describe our situation almost identically as well. And
| I can think of yet _another_ place on Earth with a similar
| situation.
| pydry wrote:
| Fear of foreign invasion is also why the Soviet Union invaded
| during the Winter War ("Greater Finland" irredentism was a
| thing, and St Petersburg was militarily exposed).
|
| Fear is why Finland allied with the Nazis.
|
| Fear is why the Soviet Union also signed a pact with the
| Nazis and invaded Ukraine.
|
| It's easy to justify anything with fear.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| Fear is why Finland allied with the Nazis.
|
| ... or maybe because Fins got invaded by Soviets.
| pydry wrote:
| They didnt stop being allied to the Nazis after the
| winter war was over. Fear maintained that alliance.
|
| Just like fear of "greater finland" made the Soviets
| invade in the first place.
|
| It's fear all the way down. The only difference is the
| validity of those fears. Obviously your country's
| enemies' fears were _always_ invalid while your country
| 's allies' fears were _always_ justified.
| mopsi wrote:
| > Just like fear of "greater finland" made the Soviets
| invade in the first place.
|
| And the fear of Poland made the Nazis invade Poland,
| right?
|
| Their propaganda no doubt presented things this way, but
| that was far from the truth. Much like Nazis had to stage
| a Polish attack on German radio station[1] to justify
| their invasion of Poland, the USSR had to fabricate the
| shelling of Mainila[2] to justify the invasion of
| Finland, because neither Poland nor Finland were
| apparently threatening enough on their own.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelling_of_Mainila
| pydry wrote:
| No. The closest living analog to the Nazis today is our
| allies in Israel and like the Nazis they arent shy about
| endless expansionism for the sake of creating lebensraum
| for their ubermensch. Theyre not very shy about the
| holocaust theyre committing either.
|
| Russia never went on an extermination drive in order to
| create an ethnically pure ethnostate.
|
| The biggest western geopolitical mistake of the 2020s is
| assuming that Israel isnt run by Nazis but Russia is.
|
| >Their propaganda no doubt presented things this way
|
| Every country presents its propaganda in its own way.
| Pointing that a country that you consider an enemy
| publishes propaganda without reference to your own serves
| merely to underscore that accident of birth dictates
| which flavor of propaganda you believe.
| oblio wrote:
| > Russia never went on an extermination drive in order to
| create an ethnically pure ethnostate.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_genocide
| oblio wrote:
| > Just like fear of "greater finland" made the Soviets
| invade in the first place.
|
| Which "fear" prompted the Soviets to invade Romania in
| 1940? Which "fear" prompted the Soviets to invade Poland
| in 1939? Which "fear" prompted the Soviets to invade the
| Baltics in 1940?
|
| Ah, now I remember, the "fear" of not being the premier
| colonial power.
| euroderf wrote:
| When speaking to Americans, I explain the wartime co-
| operation between Finland and Germany as, "The enemy of
| my enemy is not necessarily my 'friend', but we can do
| business."
| yencabulator wrote:
| I'd go with "Otherwise they would have attacked us also,
| and we definitely couldn't afford a war on two fronts."
| oblio wrote:
| One is the biggest country on the planet, with 150 million
| people.
|
| The other one is about 300 sqkm with 5 million people.
|
| When in doubt, use basic logic.
|
| Your argument is the same as Iraq being a realistic threat
| against the US.
|
| Also, list of Russian neighbors not threatened or invaded
| by Russia:
|
| Belarus (pushed into a sort of union state)
|
| China (too big)
|
| Japan (I think)
|
| Mongolia (I think)
|
| Azerbaijan (I think)
|
| List of neighbors threatened or invaded by Russia:
|
| Ukraine
|
| Georgia
|
| Moldova (Transnistria occupied since 1991)
|
| Estonia
|
| Latvia
|
| Lithuania
|
| Finland
|
| Poland
| pydry wrote:
| >Your argument is the same as Iraq being a realistic
| threat against the US.
|
| Your argument appears to be that _your enemy 's_ fear
| driven by losing 27 million people during an invasion/war
| of extermination is _exactly equivalent_ to your country
| 's fear of weapons that were imagined solely for the
| purposes of justifying an invasion.
|
| My argument was that it is quite easy to get a domestic
| population to treat all of the enemy's legitimate fears
| as _utterly_ irrelevant while treating bullshit domestic
| fears as existential.
|
| In a way I think you helped make this point for me by
| forgetting about those 27 million deaths.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| It's such a mystery why all neighbours of Russia hate
| Russia and Russians.
|
| If only there was a reason for this.
| lazide wrote:
| Experience.
| pydry wrote:
| I can name about 8 who dont. The rest all belong to or
| tried to join a military bloc which helped rape Iraq,
| Libya and Afghanistan for no particular reason other than
| because the gang boss demanded it.
|
| It's more of mystery why particular kinds of westerners
| are especially sanctimonious about Moscow while bending
| over backwards to excuse nearly identical behavior from
| the west.
| oblio wrote:
| > The rest all belong to or tried to join a military bloc
| which helped rape Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan for no
| particular reason other than because the gang boss
| demanded it.
|
| Quick essay for 20 points, those countries all decided to
| join NATO BEFORE Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan.
|
| WHY did they decide to try to join NATO? Who were they
| running away from and why?
| oblio wrote:
| Which 27 million deaths? Finland never had 27 million
| inhabitants.
| pixelesque wrote:
| > The other one is about 300 sqkm with 5 million people.
|
| You've missed a few significant figures there, Finland's
| area is: 338145 km2
| mazurnification wrote:
| No, fear is not why Soviet Union allayed with Nazis.
| Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was agreement in which Nazis and
| Soviets divided central/eastern Europe between them. They
| even had join parade after conquering Poland in Brest
| (Brzesc). And yes, they ware allied.
| pydry wrote:
| They were fighting Japan at the time, were unable to
| fight a war on two fronts and Britain had at that point
| chosen to follow a strategy of appeasement towards the
| Nazis.
|
| And your idea is that they had _zero_ reason to fear
| invasion from the west? Even though that is precisely
| what happened just a few years later?
| mazurnification wrote:
| First of all this were USSR-Japan skirmishes not war,
| second they did not have to worry about Japan as was
| shown by Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact of April 1941,
| third if they were worried about Japan then "spending"
| army on invasion of Poland, Finland, Baltics, Bessarabia
| were counter productive, fourthly at the time of
| Ribentrop Molotov pact Britain ceased following
| appeasement strategy as shown by declaring war to Germany
| at 3-rd of September 1939 as fulfillment of security
| guarantees given to Poland in March of 1939.
|
| It is totally ahistoric to pin any actions of USSR on
| fear or just reaction to external events. If WWII was
| continuation of WWI (in my and many opinion it was) both
| Germany and USRR were revanchist powers that wanted to
| reverse outcome of WWI. Many forgot that Russia later
| USSR lost WWI badly. Plus Stalin after very, very, bloody
| consolidation of power in 30ties was ready (in fact it
| was imperative for regime stability) to start outward
| aggression/expansion.
|
| Furthermore historian believe that Stalin knew that
| confrontation w/ Germany is inevitable but (more popular
| opinion) was estimating it will happen one year later at
| least or (less popular, even fringe opinion) was amassing
| forces to attack Germany and was cough by Nazis w/ "pants
| down". Either scenario would be explanation for initial
| successes of Operation Barbarossa.
|
| Fun fact - last train with grain from USSR to Germany
| crossed border few minutes before start of Operation
| Barbarossa.
|
| In summary - Soviets and Nazis were allies till 1941 -
| both parties know it was tactical alliance not unlike
| USSR - GB/USA against Germany and at the very end Japan.
| Note that after WWII there was cold war between former
| allies - not unlike like hot war between former alliance
| parties of Nazis and Soviets.
|
| Second fun fact: Orwell's "oceania was always at war with
| eastasia" from 1984 is direct reference to how alliances
| were changing during WWII.
| usrusr wrote:
| My only surprise is that they haven't already converted. It's
| not just about military aspects of an invasion, it's also
| about ease of deportation and ethnic substitution that would
| have to be expected afterwards in case of a Russian victory.
| That pattern is all too clearly established.
| tarvaina wrote:
| Also it is one party (The Finns) presenting a rail initiative
| competing with their government partner's (National Coalition)
| older initiative. It is very unlikely that they both will be
| implemented.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Underestimating the Finns' ability to just get stuff done seems
| to be a common motif throughout history.
| zokier wrote:
| There is one reason for optimism here: Finnish rail network is
| in quite poor shape and needs major work done anyways. So
| switching gauge allows funneling more EU funding into these
| projects that would need to be done either way. I imagine that
| e.g. the infamous Suomi-rata and ELSA projects will be revived
| as gauge switch.
| ljlolel wrote:
| And would deter Russian invasion (supply lines rule
| everything around me) which would significantly reduce their
| large military spending.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _would deter Russian invasion_
|
| Does Russia still own a lot of 5-foot rolling stock?
| (Genuine question.) That's what Finland is on [1].
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_ft_and_1520_mm_gauge_
| railw...
| jabl wrote:
| There's enough tolerance that you can run 1520mm rolling
| stock on 1524mm track and vice versa.
| FpUser wrote:
| Now you owe me a coffee and a keyboard
| logifail wrote:
| > funneling more EU funding
|
| I'm sure EU taxpayers will be presented with a solid business
| case demonstrating value for money before our EURbillions are
| spent on a project such as this.
|
| Oh, wait, this is the EU.
|
| Most likely a deal would be thrashed out between key players
| via Whatsapp but that "due to their ephemeral nature"[0] we
| aren't entitled to read any of their messages.
|
| [0] see https://www.politico.eu/article/pfizergate-ursula-
| von-der-le...
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| On the other hand....
|
| "Unification to standard gauge on May 31 - June 1, 1886 [United
| States]
|
| In 1886, the southern railroads agreed to coordinate changing
| gauge on all their tracks. After considerable debate and
| planning, most of the southern rail network was converted from
| 5 ft (1,524 mm) gauge to 4 ft 9 in (1,448 mm) gauge, then the
| standard of the Pennsylvania Railroad, over two days beginning
| on Monday, May 31, 1886. Over a period of 36 hours, tens of
| thousands of workers pulled the spikes from the west rail of
| all the broad gauge lines in the South, moved them 3 in (76 mm)
| east and spiked them back in place.[6] The new gauge was close
| enough that standard gauge equipment could run on it without
| problem. By June 1886, all major railroads in North America, an
| estimated 11,500 miles (18,500 km), were using approximately
| the same gauge. To facilitate the change, the inside spikes had
| been hammered into place at the new gauge in advance of the
| change. Rolling stock was altered to fit the new gauge at shops
| and rendezvous points throughout the South. The final
| conversion to true standard gauge took place gradually as part
| of routine track maintenance.[6] Now, the only broad-gauge rail
| tracks in the United States are on some city transit systems."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_gauge_in_the_United_Stat...
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Amazing.
|
| I wonder if one can do anything like this with the current
| concrete sleepers and thermite welded tracks.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| The welds could be cut and rewelded, obviously.
|
| The sleepers are molded with preset widths, however, and
| would need replacement.
| close04 wrote:
| Probably the biggest challenge is that there is way more
| rail traffic today and it's more tightly coupled in
| logistics chains and people's day to day lives.
| Disruptions are more expensive and harder to tolerate.
| And that's on top of the technical challenges, tolerances
| leave less room for error today.
| shaftoe wrote:
| (US centric assumption)
|
| It might be easier to change today than it was in 1886.
| Back then, trains were really the only means of travel
| between cities. Today, there are less passenger trains
| than back then, though more freight (even with trucks and
| planes). But freight diversions/delays could be scheduled
| well in advance and have alternative means. Not to
| mention, since then we've developed variable gauge train
| tech. A subset of trains could run during the cutover.
|
| It's likely more costly today, but less disruptive.
| MyPasswordSucks wrote:
| Passenger travel is easy mode. The economic consequences
| of disrupted freight dwarf anything you could imagine
| from disrupted passenger travel of equal duration. That's
| why the US has always strived to do a really, really good
| job with their freight rail system, and US freight is
| still to this day generally considered the best freight
| rail system in the world, even as passenger rail lags
| well behind.
|
| Remember that freight is more than just moving pallets of
| finished goods to Amazon warehouses. It doesn't matter if
| you've given the cows a month's advance notice, if they
| don't have feed they're still going to starve; and no
| matter how many KPIs you dangle at the silos, they're
| only going to hold _x_ amount of reserve grain.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Any competent shipper facing a train issue will just put
| the load on semis instead for 3-10x the price. Freight
| rail mainly exists as an low cost bulk carrier of
| convenience these days. Ships outcompete rail for bulk
| goods along inland waterways, and semis outcompete rail
| for network volume, ease of delivery, and adaptability to
| constraints.
| franktankbank wrote:
| I see several trains go by per day on my pretty sleepy
| tracks. You have no clue the amount of semis that would
| need to be built to accommodate your proposal, they just
| do not wait in the wings. Do you think all the bulk
| shipments are being done for fun and someone isn't
| waiting for 5000 gallons of HCL and 2000 tons of coal?
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I'm well aware that it's a couple hundred trucks to
| replace a single train. I'm not sure you understand that
| this is what _already_ happens. Rail carries around a
| quarter of freight ton-miles in the US. Trucks carry much
| more than that. All of the stuff that isn 't bulk, time
| insensitive freight, or anything that surges in excess of
| the carefully scheduled rail capacity already has to
| spill over onto trucks. That includes things like
| disaster recovery shipments, unusual seasonal demand, and
| so on. There's also a population of truckers that work
| these temporary jobs, as well as a certain level of
| excess vehicle capacity in the fleet carriers to service
| it, plus whatever truckers can be pulled from other work
| to meet the demand.
|
| Anyone looking at massive losses will pay the sticker
| shock to put it on trucks. Anyone who can afford to shut
| down instead will wait. That's the system working as
| intended.
| franktankbank wrote:
| Thanks for the response. I'm curious what percent of
| stuff that would normally end up on train ends up as
| spillover onto trucks. Any idea? I think stuff is quite
| finetuned already and there may only be an extra few
| percent of capacity in trucks. I agree, in a lot of cases
| it might work to just bite the bullet and wait or try a
| different apparatus. However the stuff on the trains
| typically is not slackable. That is, you aren't
| transporting computers and sofas via rail.
| culopatin wrote:
| Assuming an unlimited supply of semis and drivers to fit
| the demand. With limited supply big companies will be
| able to a compete for the available trucks at really high
| prices but small-mid businesses will be left out.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Small-mid businesses generally are not shipping on rail
| to begin with, unless they've been bundled as part of a
| larger shipment by an intermodal carrier. If you've ever
| tried to talk to a rail carrier, they really don't want
| to deal with companies under a certain size.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Assuming an unlimited supply of semis and drivers to fit
| the demand.
|
| If the US really wanted to get it done, they could
| involve the army and various state national guards. They
| have tons of trained semi and heavy truck drivers, way
| more than most people would assume. Most states also have
| tons of trained drivers for their massive snow plows and
| highway repair trucks and stuff. The only thing stopping
| these massive projects is money and lack of imagination.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| This is not as true in the US where domestic shipping is
| subject to the expenses of the Jones Act.
| MyPasswordSucks wrote:
| > Any competent shipper facing a train issue will just
| put the load on semis instead for 3-10x the price.
|
| Did you not see how the markets recently reacted to
| certain components merely doubling in cost due to
| tariffs? In what world do you live in where the
| agricultural margins are high enough that the cattle
| ranchers can just casually absorb a threefold cost
| increase? Clearly they're eating the loss, because if
| they passed those costs onwards in the chain there'd
| certainly be huge economic consequences, as I said, and
| you wouldn't have felt the need to try and correct my
| premise. Anyway, I'd like to visit this world of yours,
| though only if you'd be buying the meals.
|
| > Freight rail mainly exists as an low cost bulk carrier
| of convenience these days.
|
| This is what happens when one tries to create a narrative
| from DoT statistics.
|
| The reason why rail freight tonnage is less than truck
| tonnage is long-haul vs short-haul. You deliver lumber
| from the timber yard to the finishing facility once.
| That's rail. You don't load up trucks with semi-finished
| logs on an industrial scale, you don't load them with
| coal, you don't load them with industrial quantities of
| gravel or sand or steel either.
|
| Once you have the logs processed into boards, then you
| use trucks to carry those boards to various short-haul
| destinations, where some of the boards are further
| processed into fence pickets and bird houses and old-
| timey sign posts that Roadrunner can inadvertently spin
| around so Wile E ends up taking a completely wrong turn.
| All of that stuff then goes to storefronts and warehouses
| (also short-haul) and as a result, the short-haul tonnage
| can count twice, three times, or even more, depending on
| just how many steps are being taken between "tree" and
| "birdhouse".
|
| > Ships outcompete rail for bulk goods along inland
| waterways
|
| Which is great along inland waterways, but if you're not
| located along them, you're probably using rail to get the
| bulk goods to the shipyard.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Feel free to look up the ton-mile by distance numbers.
| Rail exceeds trucks by fairly narrow margins only for
| hauls between 1,000-2,000 miles. Below that distance,
| trucks dominate. Above that distance, trucks also
| dominate. Even in that band, it's like a narrow
| difference of like 35% vs 40%.
|
| Note that the inverse situation is common at west coast
| ports, with short haul rail lines running to intermodal
| facilities so things can be loaded onto trucks for long
| haul. The cost of transloading to domestic containers
| often dominates keeping it on rails.
|
| > The reason why rail freight tonnage is less than truck
| tonnage is long-haul vs short-haul. You deliver lumber
| from the timber yard to the finishing facility once.
| That's rail. You don't load up trucks with semi-finished
| logs on an industrial scale, you don't load them with
| coal, you don't load them with industrial quantities of
| gravel or sand or steel either.
|
| Around here the timber arrives at the railyard by truck
| and aggregates are usually mined and transported locally,
| which is truck heavy. Grain is also majority truck these
| days from the BTS stats I can see, but basic materials
| isn't my industry.
|
| Regardless, ton-miles aren't doubled counted. It's one
| ton, transported one mile. If rail took freight that
| extra distance, it'd get the same share (subject to all
| the usual caveats of industry numbers).
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" Today, there are less passenger trains than back
| then"_
|
| I don't think this is true in Europe. Certainly in the
| UK, passenger rail volume since the 2010s has set records
| higher than in any previous years, exceeding numbers that
| were last seen before WW2. Today there are fewer miles of
| track than there were in that era, but modern signalling
| technology allows more trains to operate safely on the
| same tracks, and modern trains run much faster on
| average.
|
| As for freight, the US actually moves a significantly
| greater portion of its freight by rail than Europe does.
| Rail has around 40% modal share for freight in the US vs
| only 17% in Europe. One reason for this is that in Europe
| many lines are congested with passenger traffic, leaving
| few slots for freight trains to operate - except late at
| night.
| jabl wrote:
| > As for freight, the US actually moves a significantly
| greater portion of its freight by rail than Europe does.
| Rail has around 40% modal share for freight in the US vs
| only 17% in Europe. One reason for this is that in Europe
| many lines are congested with passenger traffic, leaving
| few slots for freight trains to operate - except late at
| night.
|
| It's also that rail tends to be more competitive for long
| haul traffic, and the US operators have big trans-
| continental freight networks well suited to that. In
| Europe there's a sharp drop off in modal share as freight
| crosses borders. Each national railway operator is in
| practice fiercely protective of its own turf, and there
| are a lot of hurdles to overcome. So in practice cross-
| border freight is largely done with trucks instead.
|
| Despite the EU commission wanting to get some competition
| going on the rails and better interoperability
| requirements etc etc. for at least the past 30 years, the
| operators are still in the "discussion about preparing to
| setup a committee to discuss interoperability" phase.
| crote wrote:
| > As for freight, the US actually moves a significantly
| greater portion of its freight by rail than Europe does.
| Rail has around 40% modal share for freight in the US vs
| only 17% in Europe.
|
| Europe also has far more freight-friendly waterways. US
| rail is designed for dirt-cheap bulk transport for things
| like coal and grain. In most of Europe that's done by
| barge - but US geography doesn't really allow for that.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Since it's only 90 mm, I wonder if one could add some
| sort of a 45 mm lateral adapter between the rails and the
| ties on both sides. At least for low speed track parts...
| phkahler wrote:
| Imagine one short "train" whose tail is able to pull up one
| rail of the track behind it. Then another train whose front
| is an automated thingamajig to take the loose rail and nail
| it down a specific distance from the fixed rail. How much
| play there is in the loose rail depends on how far apart
| these two train are. Notice that the nailer runs on the
| narrow rails while the nail-puller runs on the wide ones.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Probably not, but laying track or replacing sleepers is a
| very satisfying to look at, fully automated process.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Even the wooden sleepers would have to be weakened by
| moving the spikes over. Unless the old holes were patched.
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| An impressive feat, that is unlikely unachievable on a modern
| train network.
|
| The tolerances are just a bit tighter, the risks and
| liabilities are higher, and the workforce just isn't "there"
| - this is from a time when rail was a huge money earner and
| could afford to employ a huge number of people. Today? Not so
| much, pretty much anywhere in the World.
| hedora wrote:
| In the US, rail tolerances seem to be getting looser over
| time, and derailments are still uncommon.
|
| I'd guess that overseas modern non-high speed trains could
| deal with it. The passengers might not put up with it
| though.
| fuddy wrote:
| A country that would put up with US rail is a big ask.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >The tolerances are just a bit tighter, the risks and
| liabilities are higher, and the workforce just isn't
| "there"
|
| Sure, but they do it with big machines that ride down the
| rails now instead of lining up thousands of men with sledge
| hammers.
| crote wrote:
| There are no ready-made gauge changing machines, though.
| Not exactly a big market for those.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Once Spain and Portugal move from Iberian gauge that
| market will increase a lot. Which is kinda inevitable
| with the added environmental pressure on flights.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _There are no ready-made gauge changing machines, though.
| Not exactly a big market for those._
|
| So what? I'd there isn't a machine, you build one.
|
| Large industries like mining and shipping and the
| military don't just stop because they can't buy a needed
| item off the shelf because there isn't a market for it.
| They build stuff all the time.
|
| I worked in a factory for a few years, and can tell you
| that if industries followed your "can't do" attitude,
| commerce would stop.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > this is from a time when rail was a huge money earner and
| could afford to employ a huge number of people.
|
| Well, back then the US had freshly banned slavery, so there
| was an ample workforce that could be hired for dirt cheap.
|
| The Soviets and the Wehrmacht pulled off similar feats in
| WW2, but back then the rails and sleepers didn't have to be
| built to last many decades, so in addition to loads upon
| loads of forced labor from concentration camps and gulags,
| the work effort was massively reduced because easier
| technology could be used.
| metadat wrote:
| Corresponding discussion:
|
| _The Days They Changed the Gauge (1966)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8371773 (2014, 15
| comments)
|
| And a related discussion:
|
| _Why BART uses a nonstandard broad gauge_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32031131 (2022, 253
| comments)
|
| The BART discussion was where I first learned about the North
| American 2-day gauge change. A truly inspiring feat for so
| many engineers to come together across such a large amount of
| land area to Make It Happen.
| noelrock wrote:
| So odd - was listening to an account of this in an Audiobook
| just yesterday - "Why Nothing Works" by Marc Dunkelman. Was
| essentially making the point that this sort of thing would be
| several magnitudes of difficulty harder to pull off today,
| and certainly wouldn't happen within that timeframe.
| nayuki wrote:
| > Now, the only broad-gauge rail tracks in the United States
| are on some city transit systems.
|
| One such oddball is the TTC subway/streetcar gauge of 1495 mm
| in Toronto, Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto-
| gauge_railways
| dehrmann wrote:
| Makes it even crazier that Bart would choose a non-standard
| gauge 75 years later. And now they're stuck paying for custom
| trains with less flexibility and longer lead times.
| wbl wrote:
| BART was always going to need custom trains for other
| reasons beyond track gauge. Electric third rail at those
| speeds isn't standard. 125kV pantagraph would mean big
| expensive tunnels and stations due to clearance
| requirements.
| badc0ffee wrote:
| Electric third rail at 130 km/h? The LIRR does it, with
| standard gauge:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island_Rail_Road
|
| I also don't know where you're getting 125kV from. Many
| trains throughout the world use 25kV, especially high-
| speed ones (actually high speed, like 200+km/h), but BART
| uses 1000V, which is closer to a typical subway system.
| mimsee wrote:
| The costs were already studied in 2023 and were deemed cost
| ineffective[0]. The report contained three main strategies
| (VE1, VE2, VE3) with A & B plans for the first two. Costs would
| be in the range of 10-15+ billion with 15-20+ years allocated
| for construction time[1, p. 47].
|
| [0]: https://valtioneuvosto.fi/en/-/1410829/report-shows-that-
| cha...
|
| [1]:
| https://api.hankeikkuna.fi/asiakirjat/697c1f25-332b-40ed-9d6...
| Gravityloss wrote:
| I agree that a new line at least from Tornio to Oulu would
| make sense. There's also a lot of heavy industry in the Gulf
| of Bothnia, like Raahe and Kokkola.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've changed to that URL from
| https://www.trenvista.net/en/news/rnhs/finland-migration-sta...
| above. Thanks!
| cake-rusk wrote:
| The rest of europe should move to the broader guage. It is more
| stable.
| jabl wrote:
| The difference is so marginal it doesn't matter, and is
| certainly not worth the cost.
|
| Both the heaviest cargo trains and the fastest passenger trains
| (ignoring monorails, maglevs etc., just normal style trains
| running on two steel rails) on the planet run on standard
| gauge.
| consp wrote:
| It would also make switches and curves larger so it would not
| be possible in constrained (city) environments already
| present.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| While narrower gauges are somewhat more favourable to
| tighter curve radii, ultimately the difference is
| negligible enough that it can be ignored. At the extreme
| end of the range, curve radii for standard gauge trams can
| go down into the 10 - 15 m range just the same as metre
| gauge networks, and for mainline railways curve radii
| instead are usually limited by vehicle geometry and mostly
| line speeds (centrifugal forces), which (especially the
| latter) aren't related to the track gauge.
|
| You're right about switches though - if you keep the rest
| of the switch geometry (angle, radius) the same (and to
| some extent you have to if you want to keep existing speeds
| across switches), the large track gauge alone will make the
| switch somewhat longer, which at least in complex stations
| with huge clusters of switches (like e.g. https://www.googl
| e.com/maps/@50.1039604,8.6563677,197m/data=...) could
| potentially cause some headaches.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| The rail gauge doesn't really matter but personally I wish
| Europe adopted the Russian loading gauge with 3.750m wide
| cars opposed to 3.080m wide. It makes a big difference on the
| comfort of sleeping carriages, you also have +2 seats on
| 2nd/3rd class sitting carriages and +1 seat on the 1st class.
|
| That's of course completely impossible but one can dream.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| This is a strategic move: it makes it easier to move weapons
| within Europe and makes it much harder for Russia should they
| invade.
|
| Ideally you would want to do this all over Europe.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Most of Europe is already on the same track width. I'm not sure
| whether the loading gauge (allowed size of train to fit under
| bridges) etc. is also standardized; it wasn't for the UK, which
| is why we can't have nice things like double decker commuter
| trains.
| Oarch wrote:
| We absolutely can. They'd just be deeply uncomfortable.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| > They'd just be deeply uncomfortable.
|
| I rode these kind of trains in multiple countries and
| continents and there's nothing uncomfortable about them.
|
| Why do you say that?
| walthamstow wrote:
| I think they're joking. A double decker train is only
| feasible in the UK if everyone sits on the floor.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Yeah, per sibling I think this is a joke about building a
| double decker train that's not tall enough for people to
| stand up in.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Because of the tight loading gauge in Britain, trying to
| cram two decks in would make it very small. It's been
| tried (once[0]) and they weren't able to make it fully
| double-decker, quick to load/unload, _or_ especially
| comfortable.
|
| I agree that they're fine in countries with larger
| bridges and tunnels -- Amtrak's Superliners are palatial
| in size -- but not for us. (Except probably for the
| Channel Tunnel rail link, which is built to French
| gauge).
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SR_Class_4DD
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| I rode double decker trains in the Netheraland, US,
| Germany and France and they were very good - same space
| and I would say headroom as a normal train.
|
| I was not aware that the UK has a different gauge than
| Europe and US.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Yes - to a surprising extent. The best diagram I've seen
| overlays them[0]. The British gauges are the smaller ones
| starting with W - with W6 being available essentially
| everywhere and the higher numbers on specially cleared
| routes to make it easier to move larger freight
| containers. GA and GB are standard Western European
| gauges: both taller and wider.
|
| There's a surprising amount of global variation as much
| of this stuff wasn't standardised until after most
| railways were built. AIUI that's even true in the US,
| where the routes in the West can often take double-
| stacked containers and Amtrak's Superliners, and further
| East they often can't.
|
| [0]: https://rfg.org.uk/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/08/Loading-Gauge....
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| > it wasn't for the UK, which is why we can't have nice
| things like double decker commuter trains
|
| I think bridge heights are the bigger problem here
| stuaxo wrote:
| We have a few lines with decent guages.
|
| At almost every election before this version of Labour got
| in, the Tories would promise all sorts of rail projects
| then immediately cancel them after the election.
|
| One project was a goods "spine" (all projects were "spines"
| at this point), that invovled improving the loading guage
| from Southampton upwards.
|
| For routes where this happened I don't see why we couldn't
| upgrade the stations to a bigger loading guage and have
| double decker trains.
|
| I've noticed all the bridges we get on stations these days
| are much higher.
|
| I don't know if detailed guage maps exist - it would be
| interesting to know how many bridges and tunnels stand in
| the way of reguaging on various routes.
| Reason077 wrote:
| > _" For routes where this happened I don't see why we
| couldn't upgrade the stations to a bigger loading guage
| and have double decker trains."_
|
| The costs would be high and the benefits negligible.
| Where more capacity is required, it's typically easier to
| lengthen existing trains, or run more trains, than to go
| adapting stations and building new unique double-decker
| trains that are only going to be compatible with a
| specific line.
|
| And, as mentioned elsewhere, double-deckers have a big
| disadvantage in lengthening dwell times (due to less
| doors per passenger), which could result in slower
| services.
| crote wrote:
| > I've noticed all the bridges we get on stations these
| days are much higher.
|
| Sounds like a classic case of "let's not make a future
| upgrade impossible". The material cost itself is only a
| small part of the total, so making the new bridges
| slightly higher is a rounding error in your budget.
| However, you're saving many millions if there were ever a
| full-line upgrade in the future, as you no longer need to
| do a full bridge replacement during that upgrade.
|
| As long as there is even the _vaguest_ plan of an upgrade
| at _some_ point in the future it makes sense to adhere to
| the new standard, just in case. It 's the no-regret
| option.
| jabl wrote:
| > I'm not sure whether the loading gauge (allowed size of
| train to fit under bridges) etc. is also standardized
|
| It sure is standardized; the problem is that there are so
| many standards to choose from!
|
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loading_gauge for an
| overview.
|
| Britain is a bit special, in that as the first country to
| have extensive rail infrastructure, it also has the smallest
| loading gauges around. Later built railway networks tend to
| have bigger loading gauges.
| bluGill wrote:
| > why we can't have nice things like double decker commuter
| trains.
|
| Those are not nice things. Double decker trains take longer
| to load/unload than regular trains for only a small increase
| in capacity. Single deck trains can make more stops in the
| same amount of time thus serving more people, or they can
| take less time in the stops thus getting people where they
| want to be faster. Time is important to humans, anyone who
| says slow down to others has no idea how they live or where
| their needs are. If you want to slow down and smell roses
| that is fine: go to a park and do so - meanwhile a lot of
| people need less time on transit so they get more time at
| home with their kids (or whatever else they do in life)
|
| Larger loading gauges are a good things for a lot of reasons,
| but the ability to run double decker trains is not one of
| them.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| It depends entirely on the context. For routes where total
| travel time is mostly governed by moving time, and the
| stationary time in stops is negligible, the capacity boost
| from double-deckers easily outweighs the longer (un)loading
| times. The alternatives to increase capacity can also be
| problematic: with longer trains you start running out of
| platform length (and long platforms add walking time);
| while running more trains closer together requires more
| personnel and rolling stock, and is limited by signaling
| block size and braking distance.
| bluGill wrote:
| Trains can run fully automated today, and if you are
| running into capacity issues they should be. You may
| still need more personnel, but it is a different type of
| personnel and full automation gives enough other
| advantages as to be worth it.
|
| If the size of your blocks are an issue, then that is a
| problem worth solving. If you are can't fit in all those
| trains, then you need to build more track not try to
| compromise. Yes track is expensive, but if you can't fit
| all the trains then the passenger volume is high enough
| to support it. This likely requires better operations
| though and some people see a loss of their direct train
| and don't see how a fast (fast is critical!) transfer is
| overall better for them.
| Reason077 wrote:
| ... however our new high-speed lines (HS1 and, eventually,
| HS2) are built to the largest European loading gauge (UIC
| GC).
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| This only makes it potentially easier to move things from
| Norway and Sweden through the North of the country, and
| currently there are no railway from Norway to Finland (and
| they'll likely won't be) and Sweden to Finland has a single
| link (and would be destroyed within the first few hours of an
| invasion).
|
| So little actual difference.
| radicalbyte wrote:
| It is extremely hard to put even a single land-based railway
| line out of action; just look at Ukraine. Yes lines are
| getting hit but there are engineering units who can repair
| them very quickly. You'd have to be within artillery range to
| really take it out.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| In this case I believe that there is only one link with the
| long Russian border within 200km (approx). What's more, the
| border between Sweden and Finland is along a river and so
| the railway crosses it on a bridge, two bridges, even.
|
| It is trivial to disable and no so easy to fix, especially
| if Russia has a good supply of drones and missiles (which
| is the actual issue for them as we have seen in Ukraine).
| regularization wrote:
| > makes it much harder for Russia should they invade
|
| If taking over Finland would help Russia, why didn't it do so
| in 1945 when it was there for the taking, to little protest
| from the UK and US? Russian had no use for it then, or now,
| other than the Karelian isthmus, which is part of Russia.
| Russia didn't raise much protest of Finland joining NATO. These
| notions of Russia having designs on Finland are loony.
| barbazoo wrote:
| You assume a country has a cohesive long term strategy which
| is obviously not the case since there are ephemeral people
| involved.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > why didn't it do so in 1945 when it was there for the
| taking
|
| They tried, but weren't able to defeat them completely; a
| deal / armistice was made in the end.
|
| > Finland lost 12% of its land area, 20% of its industrial
| capacity, its second largest city, Vyborg, and the ice-free
| port of Liinakhamari
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland#World_War_II
| lazide wrote:
| Russia has always wanted more ice-free ports. It's a major
| geographic problem.
| yencabulator wrote:
| "For the taking" when Russia had already suffered some 1.3
| million casualties from Finland alone.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > Ideally you would want to do this all over Europe.
|
| Not just for military purposes either, economically it makes
| sense. Trains can just keep going to the edges instead of
| having to stop and their cargo moved to a different gauge. I've
| heard they're planning on doing the same in the Baltic states.
| tonymet wrote:
| it's an absurd approach, and insane cost, if that's the goal.
| cromulent wrote:
| Note that the proposal for this came from the EU Commission over
| the last few years - the Trans-European Transport Network
| (TEN-T). Initially Finland pushed back on it as being too
| expensive.
|
| https://transport.ec.europa.eu/transport-themes/infrastructu...
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| There is little benefit for the cost for Finland. Currently I
| believe that there are no railway between Finland and the rest
| of the EU, with the first one to Sweden under construction (and
| obviously a huge detour since the only land connection is
| through the North of the country).
| abbe98 wrote:
| The connection between Finland and Sweden was built in 1919,
| however it was recently electrified(January 2025). It's dual
| gauge(four rails).
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Ok so it's passengers link that is under development.
| Doesn't change the big picture, though.
| abbe98 wrote:
| I don't think there are any ongoing projects, the current
| link can take passenger trains but there are no plans to
| do so at the moment.
|
| https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torne%C3%A5%E2%80%93Haparan
| da-...
| rurban wrote:
| Now we only need the announcement of Deutsche Bahn to convert
| fully to electrical, abandoning the gas locomotives, paving the
| way to interact with more advanced railway nations like Poland.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Unrelated in every way except it involves rail.
| rurban wrote:
| Very much related because it involves an upgrade to be able
| to reach your neighbors by rail. Soon possible in Finland,
| and German has also announced to enable rail connections to
| the south of Poland.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Doing this is a really nice opportunity for Finland. The should
| bundle it with many other upgrade. Doing general maintenance.
| Upgrade all the signaling (ETCS L2). Overhead electrify
| everything. Do minor speed upgrades. And so on.
|
| If you are not doing all of this at once, this likely isn't worth
| it.
| pacifika wrote:
| I'd imagine that would make planning and implementation more
| complex
| panick21_ wrote:
| Sure but if you already spend work teams along every railroad
| in the country, it would be a waste not do everything else.
|
| If they build new lines next to existing ones, they need to
| touch all that stuff anyway. No point in replicating old
| systems.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| The signalling you are describing is more complex and possibly
| more expensive than switching rail. Source: I work in rail
| traffic engineering.
|
| The idea is simple. Ensuring everything is smooth and safe =
| cost multiplier.
| panick21_ wrote:
| They will have to do it anyway in the same timeframe.
| eviks wrote:
| > The government is expected to make the final decision by July
| 2027
|
| You can't announce migration if you haven't decided you plan to
| migrate...
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Yes, this is political marketing.
| blueflow wrote:
| Get a look on the track topology on openrailwaymap:
|
| https://www.openrailwaymap.org/?style=gauge&lat=62.774837258...
| jabl wrote:
| That's only the main tracks. There's a huge amount not seen on
| that map.
| blueflow wrote:
| Scroll in.
| jabl wrote:
| Oh, right you are! I stand corrected.
|
| Though I have to say, that's not exactly the best UI. Not
| sure what the solution is OTOH, it's certainly not useful
| to clutter up the map when zoomed out either.
| reddalo wrote:
| That's very interesting. I wonder why Spain is different than
| the rest of Europe, given it's connected by land.
|
| It makes more sense for islands such as Ireland to retain their
| old gauge.
| Maken wrote:
| Nobody really knows. It was decided back in the XIX century
| when the rail network was build. The most common answer is
| that they thought larger locomotives would be required to
| climb the mountainous terrain in the Peninsula, which was not
| the case at all. Urban legends say that absolutely nobody in
| the committee that decided it had any idea about how trains
| work. Probably it was a protectionist measure to benefit
| local manufacturers.
| mbroncano wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_legend
|
| Probably more to do with the fact that the first train in
| Spain was build in Cuba
| Maken wrote:
| But the trains in Cuba used standard gauge. And the early
| trains in the north of Spain used (and still use) a
| narrow-gauge. It was when the central government decided
| to build a nation-wide network that the Iberian-gauge was
| chosen, making it incompatible with both the pre-existing
| Spanish railways and other continental European railways,
| in the infamous "Informe Subercase" [1]. It is the
| perfect example of design-by-committee, in which no
| technical reasons are given other than there are wider
| and narrower gauges, so they choose an arbitrary middle
| ground.
|
| bast copy of the Subercase report I could find: [1] https
| ://www.agrupament.cat/documents/Informe%20Subercase.pdf
| cladopa wrote:
| The reason is quite obvious if you know Spain's History.
|
| Given that France invaded Spain in 1807, the military made it
| necessary to have a different gauge from France. Not only
| that, the train by the coast was also forbidden in some
| places as a naval bombardment could disrupt communications in
| case of war.
|
| Spain has lots of mountains with a large plateau over 700
| meters high and the coast is usually way lower so it makes
| sense to transport things by the coast.
| m4rtink wrote:
| The Hisatsu line[1] in Japan was built through pretty
| insane terrain to make it protected from coastal attacks
| after the Russo-Japanese war.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hisatsu_Line
| rsynnott wrote:
| > It makes more sense for islands such as Ireland to retain
| their old gauge.
|
| Ireland's was kind of an accident; it wasn't even a case of
| retaining an old gauge as such; it's just that a different
| gauge won, and, being an island, this didn't matter. The
| first railway in Ireland was built in 1831 and was what's now
| called standard gauge. There were a bunch of competing
| companies, using standard gauge, 1600mm, and various other
| things. It happens that the two that won both used 1600mm
| rail, and while that first line from 1831 still largely
| exists, it was ripped up and replaced with 1600mm over a
| century ago.
|
| Britain was exactly the same, except that it happened that
| standard gauge eventually won and all the other stuff (with
| the exception of one or two narrow gauge lines, I think) was
| ultimately replaced or retired.
|
| Of course, both being islands, in a way the gauge didn't
| _really_ matter. It matters more in continental Europe,
| because you have cross-border lines.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Britain is no longer an island - it now has a tunnel
| connection to France, so as far as rail is concerned, it's
| a peninsula.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Yup, but it's just the one connection; even if there were
| a gauge difference it could be dealt with.
| 317070 wrote:
| Ironically, Britain is now an island with an extremely busy
| train connection to continental Europe.
|
| Soon, you might go from London to Koln without switching
| trains!
| siruncledrew wrote:
| Did Britain start out with the same gauge as India?
|
| I kinda expected India and Britain to use the same gauge,
| and was a bit surprised.
|
| Also, what's going on in Australia?
| jabl wrote:
| > Did Britain start out with the same gauge as India?
|
| No. There was some small lines in Scotland using the same
| gauge as India, but Britain had a bunch of different
| gauges and eventually standardized on 1435mm ("standard
| gauge") as that was the most common one.
|
| I don't recall where I read it, but IIRC there was some
| motivation that they wanted a broader gauge for India
| because they were afraid cars would topple over during
| storms. Or something like that.
|
| > Also, what's going on in Australia?
|
| Each territory built its own railway, with no thought
| about eventually building a cohesive continental network.
| In some cases narrow gauge was chosen because it was
| thought to be marginally cheaper than standard gauge.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_gauge_in_Australia
| aarroyoc wrote:
| In addition to the other comment, which I agree as I've heard
| the same, for the most part Spain and Portugal have been
| operating as if the Iberian Peninsula was an island. The
| Pyrenees are a big barrier, and in Franco's era the country
| was very isolated.
|
| The same happens with the electricity grid, even though it is
| connected to France, it has very small capacity.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| The Iberian Peninsula functioned like an island in many
| contexts. Yes, it is attached to the rest of Europe, but in
| order to get there, you need to cross high mountains. Note
| how few roads and railways cross between Spain and France.
| forty wrote:
| There are still trains going from France to Spain, the train
| change gauge before crossing the border (in either Cerbere or
| Portbou station)
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| The legend on this site is a joke. It's almost impossible to
| see the colors under the numbers, as they're only a few pixels
| wide: https://i.imgur.com/k8k394D.png
| russianGuy83829 wrote:
| I see it fine when zooming in a bit on mobile
| npteljes wrote:
| Also barely any contrast between 1520mm and 1524mm, but I'm
| sure the trains would mind that distinction a lot.
| onre wrote:
| Trains don't even notice that. Russian wagons with nominal
| gauge of 1520 mm are an everyday sight on the Finnish rail
| network, nominal gauge 1524 mm. And yes, regardless of
| sanctions.
|
| https://vaunut.org/kuva/174390?tag0=24%7CVgobo%7C
| jcranmer wrote:
| Gauge differences less than ~25mm are considered
| interoperable to some degree. At a 4mm gauge difference,
| that's basically less than the tolerance for even the most
| demanding high-speed track.
| shellfishgene wrote:
| Yes, but the tracks themselves are labeled if you zoom in on
| the map.
| bartread wrote:
| Fascinating map. I was about to ding it for missing all of the
| Swiss narrow gauge railways (of which there are many), but then
| I zoomed in a bit more and they all started to appear. Very
| cool.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Conversion to a narrower gauge should be a fairly straightforward
| process, unless concrete sleepers are in use. New axles or
| outright replacement of trucks shouldn't take multiple years of
| effort.
|
| We did such things in the US in month long long ago.
| eru wrote:
| Interesting. Do you have more sources?
| jabl wrote:
| About the US gauge change:
| http://southern.railfan.net/ties/1966/66-8/gauge.html
| thih9 wrote:
| You ignore the scale of the project, still present an estimate
| and compare the effort to something irrelevant, from a very
| different time and place. Are you my PM?
| iggldiggl wrote:
| > unless concrete sleepers are in use
|
| Which they are, as even a quick search would have shown.
| barbazoo wrote:
| You mean in the late 19th century? Things have changed quite a
| bit since then.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > in response to the need to improve military mobility
|
| lol, I guess that this is only half of the equation, the other
| being to fairly obviously reduce military mobility for another
| class of vehicles.
| harha_ wrote:
| I'd like to have high speed railways in my country, not some
| decades long political conversion project. If we need railways
| that can go across the borders of our neighboring countries,
| build new ones instead of upgrading existing ones.
| Propelloni wrote:
| Upgrading is magnitudes faster than building new. Apparently
| the current Finnisch idea is to actually build new tracks next
| to the old one, which requires wider beds, which requires more
| land, which requires more negotiations. Replacing in situ would
| be faster, but you would cripple your whole network for the
| duration.
|
| It's a tradeoff and worthy of deliberation.
| indiantinker wrote:
| TBH, it seems like a questionable way to spend EU money.
| Technically, it's fascinating, but unless it's part of a broader
| geopolitical or long-term interoperability strategy, it's hard to
| justify the costs.
|
| In Spain, we already deal with both Iberian and standard gauges--
| trains like the Talgo models can change gauges with minimal
| delay. It's not seamless, but it works reasonably well. Spain
| also has the world's second largest high speed train network.
|
| What the EU could really benefit from is greater support for
| small companies and independent freelancers who are driving
| innovation. Unfortunately, governments (Spain included) often
| treat them as revenue sources, with high taxes and complex
| regulations, while large corporations can navigate around much of
| that with ease.
| varsketiz wrote:
| The goal is defence - to prevent easy russian train logistics
| deep into Finland.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Wants to prevent the Russians from fielding dual gauge
| technology like the Spanish?
| anticensor wrote:
| Finnish climate is not suitable
| 542354234235 wrote:
| Dual gauge trains are technically much more complicated,
| making them more expensive to build, maintain, repair etc.
| Dual gauge do not work well (or at all depending) in the
| cold climate of Finland and if they did, the changeover
| takes time which adds up when you are trying to move
| thousands of cars worth of material. Dual gauge trains
| still need changeover stations, which are themselves
| expensive and complicated, as well as being targets for
| attack.
|
| Unloading to new trains carry the same problems; expensive,
| time consuming, and make for excellent targets. Logistics
| are the least interesting part of war for most people, but
| are one of, if not the most, important part.
| burmanm wrote:
| Far easier is to just destroy the train tracks with
| explosives that connect between Finland and Russia (or
| demolish them like done in Salla after letting them rot).
|
| There's no defensive reason for this other than in the
| cabinet talks.
| thehappypm wrote:
| False.
|
| First of all it's not just so easy to destroy
| infrastructure in a way that can't be rebuilt quickly;
| thousands of miles of train tracks would be difficult to
| destroy. This is happening all over Ukraine.
|
| Second, blowing up your own country's rail infrastructure
| means you can't use it, either, which means you lose an
| advantage you have that your trains can move on your rails
| but your enemy's cannot.
| citrin_ru wrote:
| Bridges are hard to rebuild quickly and they can be
| destroyed using glide bombs and cruise missiles. Ukraine
| struggles to do this because has very small air force and
| don't have enough tools to sufficiently suppress Russian
| air defence. NATO air force is stronger and can in theory
| acheive air superiority.
| burmanm wrote:
| If you look at the map you will see that there isn't
| multiple tracks coming from Russia to Finland. Some of
| them were even designed to be blown up if necessary (such
| as the Salla rail tracks).
|
| Finnish rail roads are mostly north-south bound (or west
| of Helsinki) which are not helpful to Russian advances.
| The only way for them to transport weaponry would be
| through east-west bound (near the border) and there isn't
| many. It's easy to take such out and they would not
| impact our infrastructure at all as they're not heavily
| used (if at all since eastern part of Finland is
| economically the weakest link anyway).
|
| It's quick and easy in the end to destroy. Rebuilding
| them under artillery fire isn't easy.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| IIRC Russian army had, prior to the outbreak of the current
| war, several tens of thousands of soldiers specialized just
| in emergency railway construction and repairs. IDK how many
| remain now.
|
| Russians aren't stupid, they know that the enemy will try
| to destroy the tracks when retreating, so they train to
| fix/bypass the problems quickly.
|
| That includes some transportable improvised bridges ready
| for deployment.
| dh2022 wrote:
| Far easier to re-build a few miles of tracks destroyed at
| the border then to re-gauge hundreds of miles of tracks....
| citrin_ru wrote:
| Even if the goal is defence it doesn't look like the best way
| to spend many. Finland is not a huge country, logistic using
| track is possible and incompatible rail gauge is a weak
| defence. IMHO it would be better to spend money on military
| to get a fast effect and in 20-30 years at most the threat
| will likely will be no longer relevant.
| chinathrow wrote:
| They might be too late.
| Havoc wrote:
| Is this connected to NATO & not being able to move military stuff
| fast? Timing sure seems to suggest that
| larsnystrom wrote:
| Yes, it is because of NATO. They've been thinking about it for
| some time, but NATO tipped the scales.
| oblio wrote:
| Russian military logistics are train based. If Finland switches
| away from their rail gauge, it's safer from Russian attack,
| since Russia wouldn't be able to easily carry supplies farther
| inside Finland.
| Geee wrote:
| It's the most expensive way to stop incoming trains. Tracks
| can be easily destroyed if Russia attacks.
| oblio wrote:
| From what I know they can be rebuilt easily and Russia has
| tons of engineering units for this specific purpose. That's
| what they did in Ukraine.
|
| I assume that changing the gauge also affects other related
| equipment such as signaling and such, which would make
| rebuilding much harder.
| varsketiz wrote:
| As someone from a country neighbouring russia, I wish my country
| decided to do this as well.
| jajko wrote:
| Every country in such position wishes for that (sans mandatory
| smaller part of population utterly brainwashed on some
| simplistic panslavic anti-soros fairy tales, when in reality
| russians cough cough soviets killed more slavs in past 150
| years than all external adversaries combined, included nazi
| WWII warfare and genocides).
|
| I don't think russians like to acknowledge how hated their
| country actually is, universally, across all countries that
| ever dealt with them on their soil long term, including former
| soviet republics and ie Warsaw pact. Not russian civilian
| population just to be clear but country as a whole definitely,
| just a consistently safe harbor for biggest scum mankind can
| produce.
| euroderf wrote:
| "Russia has been screwed up for the last eight hundred years,
| and Russia will be screwed up for the next eight hundred
| years."
| MrDresden wrote:
| I'm kind of surprised that this hadn't already been decided on
| years ago, seeing as the Baltics for example have been working
| towards this switch for years now already as part of the Euro
| Trans-T project.
| Yizahi wrote:
| Good for them. Better integration obviously, but even more
| important, when ruzzians will invade, they won't have as easy
| logistics as in Ukraine. War logistics can be structured very
| differently, and unlike for example USA, ruzzia moves all of
| their assets on rail, due to immense distances and shitty road
| coverage. The major battles in Ukraine were over train lines and
| connectors, for example coastal Crimea to Azov line, or major
| lines in Donbass region. And in those areas they has success
| which they managed to protect later on. While in the areas with
| bad rail access, they lost spectacularly due to logistics, like
| north of Kyiv.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| There ought to be good reason for optimism with this project. The
| land is already purchased so you "just" need to re-lay the track.
|
| Ballast cleaners* are a thing and they are already pretty amazing
| at what they do, namely taking apart track and then putting it
| back, in place, from a machine that runs on those very tracks
| itself. I could imagine a giant version that not only cleans the
| ballast but also unties then reties the track back together at
| the new gauge.
|
| * https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballast_cleaner
| zokier wrote:
| > The land is already purchased so you "just" need to re-lay
| the track.
|
| While the details are unknown, this project will almost
| certainly mean new tracks alongside the old tracks at least for
| the main lines. Which means that the existing corridors in many
| places would not have enough space. Additionally there is
| probably desire to improve the geometry to allow higher speed
| trains, so that makes the existing corridors less useful
| iggldiggl wrote:
| A ballast cleaner wouldn't be enough, because you basically
| need to swap out the sleepers, too, so you need a complete
| track-relaying train. And anything involving switches and
| crossings needs to be done conventionally, because those cannot
| be rebuilt by simply switching out the sleepers for standard
| gauge ones.
| ggm wrote:
| Good to have ambition and invest in the future. If they can
| straighten tight bends, double track judiciously, improve
| gradients lots of things get better.
| apexalpha wrote:
| At least the Russian gage is broader than the European one.
|
| Imagine the cost if it was the other way around... Nevertheless,
| a valiant effort by the Finnish.
|
| I guess we eventually have to do Ukraine (and Iberia?) too, so
| hopefully the lessons learned can be applied there.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Why would it matter much? Either way, a new railway has to be
| built (others have pointed out dual-gauge is not workable).
| apexalpha wrote:
| If you have to go from a smaller gauge to a bigger one you
| most likely have to also expand corridors, buy new land, fix
| bridges and tunnels etc...
|
| While a downshift if usually much esier since a smaller gauge
| simply fits inside the larger one so all bridges and tunnels
| are wide enough by definition.
| crote wrote:
| That's mostly an issue with loading gauge, not track gauge.
| The train is usually significantly wider than the tracks,
| so width-wise the space should already be available.
| dewey wrote:
| The WSJ did an interesting video a few days ago about this topic
| ("How This $27B Baltic Railway Will Fortify NATO Against Russia")
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eA5oEXEFlI
| yason wrote:
| The project is theoretically a good idea but it's not really
| practical, and nobody is honestly suggesting it for real --
| surely plans are cheap, and planning is even cheaper. But there
| are fewer than handful of railway lines crossing over the eastern
| border to Russia. Those can be blown up for good, for long enough
| distance that it's not feasible for Russia to rebuild track and
| reconnect to the main network should they, at some point, want to
| fall in love with Finnish rail. Other than that, the only other
| rail connection is to Sweden up north where there's already some
| arrangements to accommodate two gauges. At this point we run out
| of new reasons to change the gauge, Finland is effectively an
| island when it comes to European railway network. Surely it would
| be _nice_ to standardise with the rest of the Europe but it 's
| not much more than that.
| Hilift wrote:
| Trump recently stated that the US is eager to have massive
| amounts of trade with Russia. The most logical place to do that
| in that area would be Konigsberg, and exploit the Suwalki Gap.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suwa%C5%82ki_Gap
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6nigsberg
| jarek83 wrote:
| Given the 5 year estimate until full-scale russian invasion
| against EU, it's gonna be to late.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Oh I didn't know they published their timeline. Do you have a
| link?
| jarek83 wrote:
| https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-war-threat-europe-
| wit...
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-agrees-five-year-
| dea...
|
| https://militarnyi.com/en/news/eu-top-diplomat-russia-may-
| at...
| forty wrote:
| France has its own nuclear power and I don't think it could
| really avoid being involved like we did for Ukraine if war was
| to cross EU border (my perspective as a French citizen)
| BurningFrog wrote:
| My refactoring brain wants to do this by adding the new rail next
| to the old one, so you can still run the old trains while
| building.
|
| But 89mm is probably too small a margin for that to work.
| entropyneur wrote:
| 2032 just to start is way too late. The invasion will start
| before the end of the current US presidential term. Although it's
| useful to plan for the best case as well, I guess.
| openplatypus wrote:
| My heart sunk after reading this paragraph:
|
| > The government is expected to make the final decision by July
| 2027, with construction starting around 2032.
| Animats wrote:
| Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are also putting in a "standard
| gauge" line, so they can interoperate with the rest of Europe.
|
| What coupler are they going to use? Switching from Russian
| automatic couplers to European buffer and chain freight couplers
| is a step backwards. (It's amazing that the EU hasn't modernized
| freight couplers. There was something called "Eurocoupler"
| proposed in the 1970s, but it was never implemented. A "Digital
| Automatic Coupler" with data passthrough is being proposed now.)
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I understand why they do it, but I am curious why there is nobody
| in this kind of position that is going for something that is
| better in technical terms, not just compatible. For example, 2
| meters or even 2.5m would provide better load capacity and better
| stability for high speed curves, while keeping the width of the
| carriages the same in order to fit existing tunnels. For new
| freight lines even 3 meters may be much better that refitting to
| the relatively narrow standard.
| crote wrote:
| Because the benefits are negligible.
|
| Freight-wise, better load capacity can also be solved by
| ballastless track, using additional axles, or running longer
| trains. Passenger-wise, better stability can also be solved
| with canting - and wider tracks means _significantly_ larger
| curves.
|
| In return you get to buy significantly more expensive one-off
| trains and are unable to connect to your neighbors. Not exactly
| a great deal, is it?
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Longer trains are not a simple solution as side tracks for
| passing by need to also be longer. Also longer trains means
| building and running more carriages, which is more expensive.
|
| Why are wider inter-track requiring larger curves? It should
| be the same, but with better lateral stability.
| chinathrow wrote:
| Wow, I thought that might make sense with an agressive nation
| state at the border before even reading the article.
|
| Intesting times.
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