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461 points axelfontaine | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.206s | source
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thih9 ◴[] 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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jabl ◴[] No.44039376[source]
In 1886 the USA switched the rail gauge of the southern states to standard gauge. Most of the work was done over two days.

http://southern.railfan.net/ties/1966/66-8/gauge.html

Obviously doing this today would be a much more complicated affair, considering the much higher speeds and weights of contemporary trains.

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ExoticPearTree ◴[] No.44039538[source]
If you want to, you can do it fairly fast. The decades plan is nonsense. It cannot take decades to change tracks, especially since the size of the rail network is quite small.
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1. bluGill ◴[] No.44041377[source]
The decades are planning so the process happens fast. There is a lot that needs to happen correctly to do this fast.

I could personally switch a track guage - but it would be multiple days per km of track switched, if you trained me on how to do this I could do it much faster (I have no idea how much faster, but faster). Train a lot of people like me and it is faster. Or you could buy machines.

We also need to switch all the train wheels, again, not hard - but not something an untrained person can do quickly.

Most likely a large part of the process is finding other railroads around the world that have the needed equipment that will let them borrow it for a few months (most of which time spent in shipping not using the machines.) there are a lot of railroads with old machines they keep for emergency use that can be pressed into use. There are railroads thinking about buying a new machine that would make the order now (with the options Finland needs) if Finland contributes on the understanding Finland gets it for a few months...