I'd like to have high speed railways in my country, not some decades long political conversion project. If we need railways that can go across the borders of our neighboring countries, build new ones instead of upgrading existing ones.
Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge
91–100 of 465 posts
Re: Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge
#92> 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?
> 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 Irela…
What leads you to believe Ireland will introduce standard gauge?
Re: Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge
#93Get a look on the track topology on openrailwaymap: https://www.openrailwaymap.org/?style=gauge&lat=62.774837258...
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.
The reason is quite obvious if you know Spain's History.
Given that France invaded Spain in 1807, the military made it necessary to have a different gauge from France. Not only that, the train by the coast was also forbidden in some places as a naval bombardment could disrupt communications in case of war.
Spain has lots of mountains with a large plateau over 700 meters high and the coast is usually way lower so it makes sense to transport things by the coast.
Re: Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge
#94Get a look on the track topology on openrailwaymap: https://www.openrailwaymap.org/?style=gauge&lat=62.774837258...
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.
> It makes more sense for islands such as Ireland to retain their old gauge.
Ireland's was kind of an accident; it wasn't even a case of retaining an old gauge as such; it's just that a different gauge won, and, being an island, this didn't matter. The first railway in Ireland was built in 1831 and was what's now called standard gauge. There were a bunch of competing companies, using standard gauge, 1600mm, and various other things. It happens that the two that won both used 1600mm rail, and while that first line from 1831 still largely exists, it was ripped up and replaced with 1600mm over a century ago.
Britain was exactly the same, except that it happened that standard gauge eventually won and all the other stuff (with the exception of one or two narrow gauge lines, I think) was ultimately replaced or retired.
Of course, both being islands, in a way the gauge didn't _really_ matter. It matters more in continental Europe, because you have cross-border lines.
Re: Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge
#95Earlier 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…
Adjustable-gauge are used in Switzerland for a mountain line (Montreux-Interlaken) all through the year. I have never seen temperature issue mentioned. https://www.gpx.swiss/en/stories/technology (the video is rather cool)
That is cool, thanks for posting!
Re: Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 Irela…
What leads you to believe Ireland will introduce standard gauge?
If the proposed Cork-Dublin-Belfast high speed line (the 300km/h one, not to be confused with Irish Rail's _other_ more short-term project to bring Dublin-Cork to 200km/h standard, which will use the existing line) goes ahead, it'll almost certainly be a new standard gauge line, separate from the existing ones. Huge 'if', of course.
Re: Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge
#97Here'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…
Or they will start with a few of the most important lines that connect the countries and ports.
Re: Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge
#98Here'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…
>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.
Re: Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge
#99Earlier 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…
Adjustable-gauge are used in Switzerland for a mountain line (Montreux-Interlaken) all through the year. I have never seen temperature issue mentioned. https://www.gpx.swiss/en/stories/technology (the video is rather cool)
Nevertheless that’s what the initial feasibility studies showed. I don’t think the amount of complexity involved in that Swiss system would scale at all.
Re: Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge
#100TBH, it seems like a questionable way to spend EU money. Technically, it's fascinating, but unless it's part of a broader geopolitical or long-term interoperability strategy, it's hard to justify the costs.
In Spain, we already deal with both Iberian and standard gauges—trains like the Talgo models can change gauges with minimal delay. It's not seamless, but it works reasonably well. Spain also has the world's second largest high speed train network.
What the EU could really benefit from is greater support for small companies and independent freelancers who are driving innovation. Unfortunately, governments (Spain included) often treat them as revenue sources, with high taxes and complex regulations, while large corporations can navigate around much of that with ease.