Here's a much better article from the Finnish public broadcaster giving more context: <a href="https://yle.fi/a/74-20161606" rel="nofollow">https://yle.fi/a/74-20161606</a><p>My comments:<p>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.<p>> "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."<p>Once they have the cost estimates and effects on existing rail traffic studied, I bet construction will never start.
There ought to be good reason for optimism with this project. The land is already purchased so you “just” need to re-lay the track.<p>Ballast cleaners* are a thing and they are already pretty amazing at what they do, namely taking apart track and then putting it back, in place, from a machine that runs on those very tracks itself. I could imagine a giant version that not only cleans the ballast but also unties then reties the track back together at the new gauge.<p>* <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballast_cleaner" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballast_cleaner</a>
Get a look on the track topology on openrailwaymap:<p><a href="https://www.openrailwaymap.org/?style=gauge&lat=62.77483725887553&lon=29.498291015624996&zoom=6" rel="nofollow">https://www.openrailwaymap.org/?style=gauge&lat=62.774837258...</a>
This is a strategic move: it makes it easier to move weapons within Europe and makes it much harder for Russia should they invade.<p>Ideally you would want to do this all over Europe.
> will cost billions of euros, affect more than 9,200 km of track, and take decades<p>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?<p>Was there a comparable large scale rail infrastructure change in some other country?
The project is theoretically a good idea but it's not really practical, and nobody is honestly suggesting it for real -- surely plans are cheap, and planning is even cheaper. But there are fewer than handful of railway lines crossing over the eastern border to Russia. Those can be blown up for good, for long enough distance that it's not feasible for Russia to rebuild track and reconnect to the main network should they, at some point, want to fall in love with Finnish rail. Other than that, the only other rail connection is to Sweden up north where there's already some arrangements to accommodate two gauges. At this point we run out of new reasons to change the gauge, Finland is effectively an island when it comes to European railway network. Surely it would be <i>nice</i> to standardise with the rest of the Europe but it's not much more than that.
For those who don't know, there's a whole system alongside the eastern post-Soviet border: you arrive on a train, all the carriages are lifted and fitted with proper wheels.<p>In the poorer countries like my home country these look like this: <a href="https://dmitriid.com/media/1/3/7/1/f50f-720b-4f59-873a-75c516dd6c29.2560.png" rel="nofollow">https://dmitriid.com/media/1/3/7/1/f50f-720b-4f59-873a-75c51...</a> (article: <a href="https://dmitriid.com/romania-2023-chisinau-bucharest" rel="nofollow">https://dmitriid.com/romania-2023-chisinau-bucharest</a>)
Good for them. Better integration obviously, but even more important, when ruzzians will invade, they won't have as easy logistics as in Ukraine. War logistics can be structured very differently, and unlike for example USA, ruzzia moves all of their assets on rail, due to immense distances and shitty road coverage. The major battles in Ukraine were over train lines and connectors, for example coastal Crimea to Azov line, or major lines in Donbass region. And in those areas they has success which they managed to protect later on. While in the areas with bad rail access, they lost spectacularly due to logistics, like north of Kyiv.
Slightly more indepth article, with links to some background:
<a href="https://yle.fi/a/74-20161606" rel="nofollow">https://yle.fi/a/74-20161606</a>
TBH, it seems like a questionable way to spend EU money. Technically, it's fascinating, but unless it's part of a broader geopolitical or long-term interoperability strategy, it's hard to justify the costs.<p>In Spain, we already deal with both Iberian and standard gauges—trains like the Talgo models can change gauges with minimal delay. It's not seamless, but it works reasonably well. Spain also has the world's second largest high speed train network.<p>What the EU could really benefit from is greater support for small companies and independent freelancers who are driving innovation. Unfortunately, governments (Spain included) often treat them as revenue sources, with high taxes and complex regulations, while large corporations can navigate around much of that with ease.
At least the Russian gage is broader than the European one.<p>Imagine the cost if it was the other way around... Nevertheless, a valiant effort by the Finnish.<p>I guess we eventually have to do Ukraine (and Iberia?) too, so hopefully the lessons learned can be applied there.
Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are also putting in a "standard gauge" line, so they can interoperate with the rest of Europe.<p>What coupler are they going to use? Switching from Russian automatic couplers to European buffer and chain freight couplers is a step backwards. (It's amazing that the EU hasn't modernized freight couplers. There was something called "Eurocoupler" proposed in the 1970s, but it was never implemented. A "Digital Automatic Coupler" with data passthrough is being proposed now.)
Doing this is a really nice opportunity for Finland. The should bundle it with many other upgrade. Doing general maintenance. Upgrade all the signaling (ETCS L2). Overhead electrify everything. Do minor speed upgrades. And so on.<p>If you are not doing all of this at once, this likely isn't worth it.
Conversion to a narrower gauge should be a fairly straightforward process, unless concrete sleepers are in use. New axles or outright replacement of trucks shouldn't take multiple years of effort.<p>We did such things in the US in month long long ago.
I understand why they do it, but I am curious why there is nobody in this kind of position that is going for something that is better in technical terms, not just compatible. For example, 2 meters or even 2.5m would provide better load capacity and better stability for high speed curves, while keeping the width of the carriages the same in order to fit existing tunnels. For new freight lines even 3 meters may be much better that refitting to the relatively narrow standard.
> in response to the need to improve military mobility<p>lol, I guess that this is only half of the equation, the other being to fairly obviously reduce military mobility for another class of vehicles.
My refactoring brain wants to do this by adding the new rail next to the old one, so you can still run the old trains while building.<p>But 89mm is probably too small a margin for that to work.
Note that the proposal for this came from the EU Commission over the last few years - the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). Initially Finland pushed back on it as being too expensive.<p><a href="https://transport.ec.europa.eu/transport-themes/infrastructure-and-investment/trans-european-transport-network-ten-t_en" rel="nofollow">https://transport.ec.europa.eu/transport-themes/infrastructu...</a>
The WSJ did an interesting video a few days ago about this topic ("How This $27B Baltic Railway Will Fortify NATO Against Russia")<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eA5oEXEFlI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eA5oEXEFlI</a>
anti-invasion projects. Up next posting pro Russian narratives or other anti democratic ideologies gets you deported to the real existing implementation of said ideology. The free speach "autocracies pushing internal subversion" has to go. Yes, this cuts left, right and center.
I'd like to have high speed railways in my country, not some decades long political conversion project. If we need railways that can go across the borders of our neighboring countries, build new ones instead of upgrading existing ones.
I'm kind of surprised that this hadn't already been decided on years ago, seeing as the Baltics for example have been working towards this switch for years now already as part of the Euro Trans-T project.
Good to have ambition and invest in the future. If they can straighten tight bends, double track judiciously, improve gradients lots of things get better.
2032 just to start is way too late. The invasion will start before the end of the current US presidential term. Although it's useful to plan for the best case as well, I guess.
My heart sunk after reading this paragraph:<p>> The government is expected to make the final decision by July 2027, with construction starting around 2032.
> The government is expected to make the final decision by July 2027<p>You can't announce migration if you haven't decided you plan to migrate...
Now we only need the announcement of Deutsche Bahn to convert fully to electrical, abandoning the gas locomotives, paving the way to interact with more advanced railway nations like Poland.