Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge

yle.fi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 465 posts

Re: Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge

#211

Post by IAmBroom »

Gravityloss wrote: post #185
sbuttgereit wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Amazing. I wonder if one can do anything like this with the current concrete sleepers and thermite welded tracks.

The welds could be cut and rewelded, obviously.

The sleepers are molded with preset widths, however, and would need replacement.

Re: Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge

#212

Post by pydry »

StefanBatory wrote: post #159
pydry wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fear is why Finland allied with the Nazis. ... or maybe because Fins got invaded by Soviets.

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.

Re: Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge

#213

Post by kibwen »

FpUser wrote: post #187
kibwen wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

>"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.

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.

Re: Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge

#214

Post by close04 »

IAmBroom wrote: post #211
Gravityloss wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing. I wonder if one can do anything like this with the current concrete sleepers and thermite welded tracks.

The welds could be cut and rewelded, obviously. The sleepers are molded with preset widths, however, and would need replacement.

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.

Re: Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge

#215

Post by Maken »

mbroncano wrote: post #204
Maken wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 loc…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_legend Probably more to do with the fact that the first train in Spain was build in Cuba

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

Re: Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge

#216

Post by smallstepforman »

jabl wrote: post #199
paddy_m wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 Ukraini…

“ endless supply of uneducated conscripts “

Now you’re just being silly.

Re: Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge

#217

Post by IAmBroom »

kranke155 wrote: post #207
paddy_m wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is a debunked post I think.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1507056013245128716.html

Your cite?

Re: Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge

#218

Post by anonymars »

vintermann wrote: post #164
kibwen wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

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…

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.

Re: Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge

#220

Post by mimsee »

vesinisa wrote: post #14

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…

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...

Post reply on HN