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Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge

(yle.fi)
461 points axelfontaine | 2 comments | 20 May 25 07:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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thih9 ◴[20 May 25 08:17 UTC] No.44039085[source]▶
> 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?

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rsynnott ◴[20 May 25 09:40 UTC] No.44039651[source]▶
> 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).

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1. padjo ◴[20 May 25 09:44 UTC] No.44039673[source]▶
What leads you to believe Ireland will introduce standard gauge?
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2. rsynnott ◴[20 May 25 09:49 UTC] No.44039692[source]▶
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.