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

131–140 of 465 posts

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

#131

Post by jajko »

varsketiz wrote: post #111

As someone from a country neighbouring russia, I wish my country decided to do this as well.

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.

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

#132

Post by Akronymus »

pjc50 wrote: post #126
lukan wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

Couldn't they build something similar to the eurotunnel but with denmark and sweden?

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

#133

Post by pydry »

oblio wrote: post #110
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…

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.

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.

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

#134

Post by andriamanitra »

arnsholt wrote: post #108
andriamanitra wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

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

#135

Post by bartread »

blueflow wrote: post #41

Get a look on the track topology on openrailwaymap: https://www.openrailwaymap.org/?style=gauge&lat=62.774837258...

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.

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

#136

Post by dotancohen »

thih9 wrote: post #3

> 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?

  > 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.

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

#137

Post by zokier »

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…

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.

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

#138

Post by dotancohen »

Akronymus wrote: post #128
detaro wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia, not Austria ;)

I can count on one hand how often I've seen that mixup happen in that direction. As an austrian, I am amused.

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?

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

#139

Post by Yizahi »

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.

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

#140

Post by lukan »

Akronymus wrote: post #132
pjc50 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Couldn't they build something similar to the eurotunnel but with denmark and sweden?

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

Post reply on HN