231–240 of 465 posts
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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.
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This only makes it potentially easier to move things from Norway and Sweden through the North of the country, and currently there are no railway from Norway to Finland (and they'll likely won't be) and Sweden to Finland has a single link (and would be destroyed within the first few hours of an invasion). So little actual difference.
It is extremely hard to put even a single land-based railway line out of action; just look at Ukraine. Yes lines are getting hit but there are engineering units who can repair them very quickly. You'd have to be within artillery range to really take it out.
It is trivial to disable and no so easy to fix, especially if Russia has a good supply of drones and missiles (which is the actual issue for them as we have seen in Ukraine).
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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.
And the fear of Poland made the Nazis invade Poland, right?
Their propaganda no doubt presented things this way, but that was far from the truth. Much like Nazis had to stage a Polish attack on German radio station[1] to justify their invasion of Poland, the USSR had to fabricate the shelling of Mainila[2] to justify the invasion of Finland, because neither Poland nor Finland were apparently threatening enough on their own.
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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.
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> I am not convinced this project is ever going to pay for itself. The subtext is not economic: it's "in the event of being invaded by Russia, can we minimize the delays in moving NATO materiel by rail to the front while denying Russia equally easy access to the rails".
Assuming Russia waits 30-50 years until Finland has new tracks :))
The silver lining in the horrific invasion of Ukraine is that the Russian bear's belly is not just exposed, but raw from shaving nicks.
Granted, it still takes a lot to kill a bear - but the West only wants deterrence, not occupation of Russia.
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…
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,…
The tolerances are just a bit tighter, the risks and liabilities are higher, and the workforce just isn't "there" - this is from a time when rail was a huge money earner and could afford to employ a huge number of people. Today? Not so much, pretty much anywhere in the World.
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…
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,…
At least the Russian gage is broader than the European one. Imagine the cost if it was the other way around... Nevertheless, a valiant effort by the Finnish. I guess we eventually have to do Ukraine (and Iberia?) too, so hopefully the lessons learned can be applied there.
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> 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.
Train tracks are normally not precise to within 4mm anyway, and wheels are wide enough to tolerate that.
Yes they are. Of course practical tolerances including allowances for wear and there are large enough that things can be made to work, but in terms of nominal construction tolerances for example, 4 mm can easily eat up all your construction tolerances or even exceed them.