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Conversion to a narrower gauge should be a fairly straightforward process, unless concrete sleepers are in use. New axles or outright replacement of trucks shouldn't take multiple years of effort. We did such things in the US in month long long ago.
Interesting. Do you have more sources?
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In 1886 the USA switched the rail gauge of the southern states to standard gauge. Most of the work was done over two days. http://southern.railfan.net/ties/1966/66-8/gauge.html Obviously doing this today would be a much more complicated affair, considering the much higher speeds and weights of contemporary trains.
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.
lol, I guess that this is only half of the equation, the other being to fairly obviously reduce military mobility for another class of vehicles.
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We absolutely can. They'd just be deeply uncomfortable.
> They'd just be deeply uncomfortable. I rode these kind of trains in multiple countries and continents and there's nothing uncomfortable about them. Why do you say that?
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In Spain it's ongoing, very slowly, since the first international gauge high-speed rail line started operation in 1992. It's a slow and quite annoying process. For example, to reach my region, trains from Madrid have to change gauge because my region still has the old one. Apart from spending around 10 minutes doing this, this has caused a lot of problems because it essentially means there is a single model of 300 km…
You lost me at ‘single model of 300km/h train that can make it here’ Meanwhile here in Australia our “fast rail” trains go 160km/h. Unless it’s over 32 degrees, then they slow down. And if it hits 36 degrees they slow down even more (90km/h) And it gets that hot here a lot… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V/Line_VLocity https://www.vline.com.au/heat
> 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?
There were a number of gauge changes, but they were usually quite early on, when the infra was less critical and you could get away with closing lines for months. I'm not sure that there's a real 20th century example, beyond standard gauge high speed alongside non-standard normal-speed (for instance see Spain, and likely soon Ireland).
Just note Finland uses the Tsarist Russian 1524 mm gauge. Not the Allied Soviet 1520 mm gauge.
Interesting. In practice they seem compatible? There were frequent trains running between Helsinki and Saint Petersburg, I remember taking it and there was a seamless transition across the border.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VR_Class_Sm6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_ft_and_1520_mm_gauge_railway...
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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 :))
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You lost me at ‘single model of 300km/h train that can make it here’ Meanwhile here in Australia our “fast rail” trains go 160km/h. Unless it’s over 32 degrees, then they slow down. And if it hits 36 degrees they slow down even more (90km/h) And it gets that hot here a lot… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V/Line_VLocity https://www.vline.com.au/heat
Don’t OBB Railjet trains travel at 230km/h?
> 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?
That article has a short paragraph mentioning it: