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Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge

(yle.fi)
461 points axelfontaine | 3 comments | 20 May 25 07:40 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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radicalbyte ◴[20 May 25 08:42 UTC] No.44039248[source]▶
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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1. mytailorisrich ◴[20 May 25 09:12 UTC] No.44039455[source]▶
This only makes it potentially easier to move things from Norway and Sweden through the North of the country, and currently there are no railway from Norway to Finland (and they'll likely won't be) and Sweden to Finland has a single link (and would be destroyed within the first few hours of an invasion).

So little actual difference.

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2. radicalbyte ◴[20 May 25 11:35 UTC] No.44040347[source]▶
It is extremely hard to put even a single land-based railway line out of action; just look at Ukraine. Yes lines are getting hit but there are engineering units who can repair them very quickly. You'd have to be within artillery range to really take it out.
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3. mytailorisrich ◴[20 May 25 12:47 UTC] No.44040975[source]▶
In this case I believe that there is only one link with the long Russian border within 200km (approx). What's more, the border between Sweden and Finland is along a river and so the railway crosses it on a bridge, two bridges, even.

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).