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.
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Ideally you would want to do this all over Europe.
So little actual difference.
I rode these kind of trains in multiple countries and continents and there's nothing uncomfortable about them.
Why do you say that?
I think bridge heights are the bigger problem here
At almost every election before this version of Labour got in, the Tories would promise all sorts of rail projects then immediately cancel them after the election.
One project was a goods "spine" (all projects were "spines" at this point), that invovled improving the loading guage from Southampton upwards.
For routes where this happened I don't see why we couldn't upgrade the stations to a bigger loading guage and have double decker trains.
I've noticed all the bridges we get on stations these days are much higher.
I don't know if detailed guage maps exist - it would be interesting to know how many bridges and tunnels stand in the way of reguaging on various routes.
It sure is standardized; the problem is that there are so many standards to choose from!
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loading_gauge for an overview.
Britain is a bit special, in that as the first country to have extensive rail infrastructure, it also has the smallest loading gauges around. Later built railway networks tend to have bigger loading gauges.
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).
Those are not nice things. Double decker trains take longer to load/unload than regular trains for only a small increase in capacity. Single deck trains can make more stops in the same amount of time thus serving more people, or they can take less time in the stops thus getting people where they want to be faster. Time is important to humans, anyone who says slow down to others has no idea how they live or where their needs are. If you want to slow down and smell roses that is fine: go to a park and do so - meanwhile a lot of people need less time on transit so they get more time at home with their kids (or whatever else they do in life)
Larger loading gauges are a good things for a lot of reasons, but the ability to run double decker trains is not one of them.
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.
Not just for military purposes either, economically it makes sense. Trains can just keep going to the edges instead of having to stop and their cargo moved to a different gauge. I've heard they're planning on doing the same in the Baltic states.
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
The costs would be high and the benefits negligible. Where more capacity is required, it's typically easier to lengthen existing trains, or run more trains, than to go adapting stations and building new unique double-decker trains that are only going to be compatible with a specific line.
And, as mentioned elsewhere, double-deckers have a big disadvantage in lengthening dwell times (due to less doors per passenger), which could result in slower services.
I agree that they're fine in countries with larger bridges and tunnels -- Amtrak's Superliners are palatial in size -- but not for us. (Except probably for the Channel Tunnel rail link, which is built to French gauge).
I was not aware that the UK has a different gauge than Europe and US.
Sounds like a classic case of "let's not make a future upgrade impossible". The material cost itself is only a small part of the total, so making the new bridges slightly higher is a rounding error in your budget. However, you're saving many millions if there were ever a full-line upgrade in the future, as you no longer need to do a full bridge replacement during that upgrade.
As long as there is even the vaguest plan of an upgrade at some point in the future it makes sense to adhere to the new standard, just in case. It's the no-regret option.
There's a surprising amount of global variation as much of this stuff wasn't standardised until after most railways were built. AIUI that's even true in the US, where the routes in the West can often take double-stacked containers and Amtrak's Superliners, and further East they often can't.
[0]: https://rfg.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Loading-Gauge....
If the size of your blocks are an issue, then that is a problem worth solving. If you are can't fit in all those trains, then you need to build more track not try to compromise. Yes track is expensive, but if you can't fit all the trains then the passenger volume is high enough to support it. This likely requires better operations though and some people see a loss of their direct train and don't see how a fast (fast is critical!) transfer is overall better for them.
