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Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge

yle.fi

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

#311

Post by lazide »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #290
regularization wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> why didn't it do so in 1945 when it was there for the taking They tried, but weren't able to defeat them completely; a deal / armistice was made in the end. > Finland lost 12% of its land area, 20% of its industrial capacity, its second largest city, Vyborg, and the ice-free port of Liinakhamari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland#World_War_II

Russia has always wanted more ice-free ports. It's a major geographic problem.

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

#312

Post by nradov »

hollerith wrote: post #259
nradov wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, under Soviet military occupation.

There was no military occupation of Finland in the 1990s .

A was referring to the Baltic countries, as per the comment from @kibwen above.

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

#313

Post by culopatin »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #272
MyPasswordSucks wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passenger travel is easy mode. The economic consequences of disrupted freight dwarf anything you could imagine from disrupted passenger travel of equal duration. That's why the US has always strived to do a really, really good job with their freight rail system, and US freight is still to this day generally considered the best freight rail system in the world, even as passenger rail lags well behind. Remember that fr…

Any competent shipper facing a train issue will just put the load on semis instead for 3-10x the price. Freight rail mainly exists as an low cost bulk carrier of convenience these days. Ships outcompete rail for bulk goods along inland waterways, and semis outcompete rail for network volume, ease of delivery, and adaptability to constraints.

Assuming an unlimited supply of semis and drivers to fit the demand. With limited supply big companies will be able to a compete for the available trucks at really high prices but small-mid businesses will be left out.

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

#314

Post by gosub100 »

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.

Even the wooden sleepers would have to be weakened by moving the spikes over. Unless the old holes were patched.

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

#315

Post by jarek83 »

barbazoo wrote: post #309
jarek83 wrote: post #240

Given the 5 year estimate until full-scale russian invasion against EU, it's gonna be to late.

Oh I didn’t know they published their timeline. Do you have a link?

https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-war-threat-europe-wit...

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-agrees-five-year-dea...

https://militarnyi.com/en/news/eu-top-diplomat-russia-may-at...

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

#316

Post by culopatin »

varsketiz wrote: post #98
cladopa wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Once they have the cost estimates and effects on existing rail traffic studied, I bet construction will never start. It is not that hard. Countries like Spain have already two different gauges and have the necessary technology in the trains to change between different systems.

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.

Wouldn’t it be simpler to make a “train moat” by disconnecting rails from Russia? Or would they run the trains on dirt for a mile and re attach?

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

#317

Post by AlotOfReading »

franktankbank wrote: post #301
AlotOfReading wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any competent shipper facing a train issue will just put the load on semis instead for 3-10x the price. Freight rail mainly exists as an low cost bulk carrier of convenience these days. Ships outcompete rail for bulk goods along inland waterways, and semis outcompete rail for network volume, ease of delivery, and adaptability to constraints.

I see several trains go by per day on my pretty sleepy tracks. You have no clue the amount of semis that would need to be built to accommodate your proposal, they just do not wait in the wings. Do you think all the bulk shipments are being done for fun and someone isn't waiting for 5000 gallons of HCL and 2000 tons of coal?

I'm well aware that it's a couple hundred trucks to replace a single train. I'm not sure you understand that this is what already happens. Rail carries around a quarter of freight ton-miles in the US. Trucks carry much more than that. All of the stuff that isn't bulk, time insensitive freight, or anything that surges in excess of the carefully scheduled rail capacity already has to spill over onto trucks. That includes things like disaster recovery shipments, unusual seasonal demand, and so on. There's also a population of truckers that work these temporary jobs, as well as a certain level of excess vehicle capacity in the fleet carriers to service it, plus whatever truckers can be pulled from other work to meet the demand.

Anyone looking at massive losses will pay the sticker shock to put it on trucks. Anyone who can afford to shut down instead will wait. That's the system working as intended.

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

#318

Post by AlotOfReading »

culopatin wrote: post #313
AlotOfReading wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any competent shipper facing a train issue will just put the load on semis instead for 3-10x the price. Freight rail mainly exists as an low cost bulk carrier of convenience these days. Ships outcompete rail for bulk goods along inland waterways, and semis outcompete rail for network volume, ease of delivery, and adaptability to constraints.

Assuming an unlimited supply of semis and drivers to fit the demand. With limited supply big companies will be able to a compete for the available trucks at really high prices but small-mid businesses will be left out.

Small-mid businesses generally are not shipping on rail to begin with, unless they've been bundled as part of a larger shipment by an intermodal carrier. If you've ever tried to talk to a rail carrier, they really don't want to deal with companies under a certain size.

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

#319

Post by noelrock »

sbuttgereit wrote: post #175
vesinisa wrote: post #14

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,…

So odd - was listening to an account of this in an Audiobook just yesterday - "Why Nothing Works" by Marc Dunkelman. Was essentially making the point that this sort of thing would be several magnitudes of difficulty harder to pull off today, and certainly wouldn't happen within that timeframe.

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

#320

Post by lazide »

firesteelrain wrote: post #306
lazide wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'86, in the south? Let's not be racist and assume the labor was Chinese - surely it was 95% recently freed black slaves paid almost nothing + 'free' prison labor. (/s, a little).

This was 20 years after the Civil War. It consisted mostly of skilled and semi-skilled workers laborers that were White, African American and other immigrant labor. Chinese laborers were mostly concentrated in the West not the South. The reconstruction of the southern rail network involved many people who were part of the Southern economy and employment structure at that time

I believe that’s what I said.
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