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Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge

(yle.fi)
461 points axelfontaine | 4 comments | 20 May 25 07:40 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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vesinisa ◴[20 May 25 08:26 UTC] No.44039149[source]▶
Here'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 continue until the end of the decade, and maybe in 2032 we can start construction."

Once they have the cost estimates and effects on existing rail traffic studied, I bet construction will never start.

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cladopa ◴[20 May 25 09:34 UTC] No.44039611[source]▶
>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.

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varsketiz ◴[20 May 25 09:50 UTC] No.44039699[source]▶
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.
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adrianmsmith ◴[20 May 25 10:11 UTC] No.44039826[source]▶
> One of the main goals of this is to not have the russian gauge available in case russians attack

This doesn't seem like it can be a goal given

> maybe in 2032 we can start construction

I mean unless the plan is to assume Russia won't attack until e.g. 2040 when construction will be complete && Russia can't implement multi-gauge trains that Spain is already using now?

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1. vintermann ◴[20 May 25 10:34 UTC] No.44039939[source]▶
Like most such things, it's probably mostly symbolic, so politicians can say they're doing something in defiance of Russia (which is a very popular thing to do in Finland right now, or most of the west for that matter). I guess they'll back down on it when by 2032, everyone realizes it doesn't matter since wars will be fought with small autonomous drones and any railroad would be sabotaged in an instant.
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2. Retric ◴[20 May 25 11:07 UTC] No.44040140[source]▶
What kind of ranges are you expecting from these small drones so logistics suddenly doesn’t matter? Even if something can hypothetically travel thousands of miles, designing disposable weapons with that kind of range has a real cost.
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3. vintermann ◴[20 May 25 11:27 UTC] No.44040284[source]▶
Sure, logistics matter. I'm sure Russian-gauge railroads in Finland would be mildly convenient for invading Sweden, provided you can first invade and utterly defeat Finland quickly enough that the railways survive.

But if Putin could do that (he can't), railway gauges would be the least of our worries.

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4. Retric ◴[20 May 25 12:59 UTC] No.44041073{3}[source]▶
So the drone bit was a non sequitur.

As to railways surviving it’s relatively difficult to effectively destroy rail infrastructure. Making the call to cripple your internal infrastructure is tough especially in such a dire situation, it’s also a really large target. Taking out some strategic bridges is easier but most local issues can be quickly fixed when you talking million men armies.