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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

#261

Post by bluGill »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #170
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?

They'll probably go line by line. 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…

Problem with line by line is you need to have gauge switching systems someplace - line be line means you are moving all that.

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

#262

Post by panick21_ »

IAmBroom wrote: post #242
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.

The signalling you are describing is more complex and possibly more expensive than switching rail. Source: I work in rail traffic engineering. The idea is simple. Ensuring everything is smooth and safe = cost multiplier.

They will have to do it anyway in the same timeframe.

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

#263

Post by iggldiggl »

gorgoiler wrote: post #146

There ought to be good reason for optimism with this project. The land is already purchased so you “just” need to re-lay the track. 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 ret…

A ballast cleaner wouldn't be enough, because you basically need to swap out the sleepers, too, so you need a complete track-relaying train. And anything involving switches and crossings needs to be done conventionally, because those cannot be rebuilt by simply switching out the sleepers for standard gauge ones.

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

#264

Post by phkahler »

Gravityloss wrote: post #185
sbuttgereit wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Amazing. I wonder if one can do anything like this with the current concrete sleepers and thermite welded tracks.

Imagine one short "train" whose tail is able to pull up one rail of the track behind it. Then another train whose front is an automated thingamajig to take the loose rail and nail it down a specific distance from the fixed rail. How much play there is in the loose rail depends on how far apart these two train are. Notice that the nailer runs on the narrow rails while the nail-puller runs on the wide ones.

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

#265

Post by regularization »

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.

> makes it much harder for Russia should they invade

If taking over Finland would help Russia, why didn't it do so in 1945 when it was there for the taking, to little protest from the UK and US? Russian had no use for it then, or now, other than the Karelian isthmus, which is part of Russia. Russia didn't raise much protest of Finland joining NATO. These notions of Russia having designs on Finland are loony.

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

#266

Post by rurban »

IAmBroom wrote: post #243
rurban wrote: post #31

Now we only need the announcement of Deutsche Bahn to convert fully to electrical, abandoning the gas locomotives, paving the way to interact with more advanced railway nations like Poland.

Unrelated in every way except it involves rail.

Very much related because it involves an upgrade to be able to reach your neighbors by rail. Soon possible in Finland, and German has also announced to enable rail connections to the south of Poland.

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

#267

Post by pydry »

mopsi wrote: post #233
pydry wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Just like fear of "greater finland" made the Soviets invade in the first place. 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 Fin…

No. The closest living analog to the Nazis today is our allies in Israel and like the Nazis they arent shy about endless expansionism for the sake of creating lebensraum for their ubermensch. Theyre not very shy about the holocaust theyre committing either.

Russia never went on an extermination drive in order to create an ethnically pure ethnostate.

The biggest western geopolitical mistake of the 2020s is assuming that Israel isnt run by Nazis but Russia is.

>Their propaganda no doubt presented things this way

Every country presents its propaganda in its own way. Pointing that a country that you consider an enemy publishes propaganda without reference to your own serves merely to underscore that accident of birth dictates which flavor of propaganda you believe.

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

#268

Post by phkahler »

potato3732842 wrote: post #117
varsketiz wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

And if you're Russia wanting to invade Europe, it's better to do the Gauge switching right near your own border rather than on the far side of Finland. So while this may make it harder to invade Finland, it makes it easier to invade Europe as a whole.

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

#269

Post by iggldiggl »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #169
xattt wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you want to nitpick about some corner case, go ahead. I have this feeling that Finland's railway tracks are not set in concrete at street level ;)

But they are set into prefabricated concrete sleepers, which cannot be modified to a new track gauge and instead need to be swapped out completely. Whereas during the US gauge change, the railways used wooden sleepers, with the rails fastened simply with nails hammered into the sleepers, so it was simply a matter of pulling out the nails and hammering them in again at the new track gauge.

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

#270

Post by alexey-salmin »

vincnetas wrote: post #51
Sharlin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’d need four rails, a 9 cm separation isn’t enough to fit two side by side. This solution has been ruled out as technically infeasible (I don’t even want to think about what the switches would look like…) Adjustable-gauge rolling stock has also been ruled out as incompatible with the Finnish climate. The most (only?) feasible way to do it is to “simply” build entirely new standard-gauge track next to existing trac…

This reminded me about a joke. When engineers asked should we do the rails same width like in europe or wider, the answer they got from tzar was "Нахуй шире" literal translation "wider by length of dick, but meaning "why the fuck we need wider" - В Европе ширина колеи 1435 миллиметров. Нам делать так же или шире? - Нахуй шире, - ответил император.

Sounds like a variation on the "Tsar's finger" anecdote

https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/580-the-legend-of-the-tsar...

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