161–170 of 465 posts
Is this connected to NATO & not being able to move military stuff fast? Timing sure seems to suggest that
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.
> 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.
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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 What is the acceptable tolerance? It doesn't sound like a huge engineering effort to design a boogie compatible with both without requiring switching.
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> 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?
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.…
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.
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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.
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?
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 What is the acceptable tolerance? It doesn't sound like a huge engineering effort to design a boogie compatible with both without requiring switching.
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.
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.
I think bridge heights are the bigger problem here
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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.
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.
I have this feeling that Finland's railway tracks are not set in concrete at street level ;)
> 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?
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.
