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Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge

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

#201

Post by pixelesque »

oblio wrote: post #173
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.

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 o…

> 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

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

#202

Post by panick21_ »

pacifika wrote: post #52
panick21_ wrote: post #35

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.

I’d imagine that would make planning and implementation more complex

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.

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

#203

Post by vintermann »

kibwen wrote: post #186
vintermann wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 powe…

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.

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

#204

Post by mbroncano »

Maken wrote: post #72
reddalo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

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

#205

Post by shellfishgene »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #56
blueflow wrote: post #41

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

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

Yes, but the tracks themselves are labeled if you zoom in on the map.

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

#206

Post by jabl »

pjc50 wrote: post #38
radicalbyte wrote: post #26

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'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.

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

#207

Post by kranke155 »

paddy_m wrote: post #147
theshrike79 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#208

Post by rmind »

anticodon wrote: post #194
ceejayoz wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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 Šeštokai Intermodal Terminal) was completed back in 2015. The freight trains have been operating on this line all the time.

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

#209

Post by rmind »

kibwen wrote: post #186
vintermann wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 powe…

"Removing Russian from their list of official languages"? It was never an official language in the first place.

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

#210

Post by kibwen »

vintermann wrote: post #203
kibwen wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 powe…

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 enou…

> 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.

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