141–150 of 465 posts
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This is how it looks (Galati, Romania): https://greatnews.ro/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/linia-ferata...
I can only imagine what the switches look like.
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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?
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
> The difference between Finnish and Russian gauge is 4mm
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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?
But austria and australia regularily exchange mail that got sent to the wrong country.
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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
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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.
> 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?
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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?
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 :)
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.
It's a tradeoff and worthy of deliberation.
> 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?
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. Finl…
