[cladopa]

>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.

[varsketiz]

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.

[potato3732842]

It's not like this results in a categorical difference in difficulty. Gauge switching infrastructure is common at borders. Yeah stopping and switching is slower than driving right through but it's not the end of the world in the long tail of military logistics.

[theshrike79]

Russian military logistics _heavily_ depend on trains, everything that can go on a train, does so. Flight and vehicle stuff is mostly an afterthought.

Any hindrance we can put on the Finnish-Russian border to stop them just unloading 12 cars of fresh troops in the middle of the country is a good thing.

[paddy_m]

Another fun note about Russian logistics, they aren't palletized or mechanized. Thought being that cranes don't look good in parades. The train side seems smart or at least interesting, the pallets incredibly dumb.

https://x.com/TrentTelenko/status/1507056013245128716

[theshrike79]

Compare this to the completely bonkers logistics of the US Military: https://youtu.be/iIpPuJ_r8Xg

Even Unicef has a massive logistics center in Denmark with pallets of stuff categorised and ready to be sent for any emergency: https://www.unicef.org/supply/warehousing-and-distribution

[wkat4242]

Well yes but the US usually fights in faraway places to bring freedom (though the only thing they manage to 'liberate' is oil, see how Afghanistan and Iraq turned into hellholes as soon as they turned their backs)

Russia just likes to kill the shit out of their neighbours which is a lot easier logistically.

[jabl]

Why invest in forklifts, container infrastructure etc. if your military has a near-endless supply of uneducated conscripts you can order to shuffle around shells and other items?

(Of course a more thorough analysis would probably come to the conclusion that better logistics is worth it. There's still an opportunity cost for those conscripts who could do something else instead, like dying in zerg rushes on the Ukrainian front. And even though those conscripts are 'free' they still require chow and a place to sleep etc.)

[smallstepforman]

“ endless supply of uneducated conscripts “

Now you’re just being silly.

[kranke155]

This is a debunked post I think.

[IAmBroom]

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1507056013245128716.html

Your cite?

[celticninja]

i dont believe it is.

[kibwen]

Gauge switching requires trains outfitted with specialized axles (increasing the cost to invade), requires trains to stop (increasing the train's vulnerability to attack), and requires switching stations which themselves are juicy targets and can't be repaired nearly as trivially as an ordinary length of rail.

[stuaxo]

It adds time for each train though.

[phkahler]

And if you're Russia wanting to invade Europe, it's better to do the Gauge switching right near your own border rather than on the far side of Finland. So while this may make it harder to invade Finland, it makes it easier to invade Europe as a whole.

[gbear605]

The far side of Finland? That’s the Baltic Sea. Sure, there’s a little bit of Sweden, but it’s so far north that there isn’t much rail infrastructure there - certainly little enough that it could quickly be destroyed at the beginning of a war.

[dmurray]

The stated reason for the gauge change is "to remove technical obstacles to transporting troops and goods between Finland, Sweden and Norway".

Those few connections in the sparse north of the country are the entire point.

[_w1tm]

If the supply line is blown up at the beginning of the war then what was the point of switching gauges.

[Cthulhu_]

The objective they try to achieve is not to slow down Russia's invasion into Europe, but to stop them at the border by being able to move assets throughout Europe relatively quickly. If they gain a proper foothold and full access to "euro gauge" rails, it's a different fight.

Of course, if it does go that far, tanks and trains can move rolling stock, rip up the tracks, blow up bridges and other infrastructure behind them if they're forced to retreat.

[dcow]

This. I am struggling to see how this is anything other than posturing by politicians. It’s hard to imagine this is strategy devised by military leaders.

[dotancohen]

But if the Spanish can muster dual gauge trains, what's to prevent the Russians from doing the same? Or is the Finnish gauge a state secret?

[Cthulhu_]

It's less about what the Russians can do and more about how fast European and NATO countries can move assets to a potential invasion front line; as it stands, they're slowed down at the borders needing to switch to the different gauges.

[bell-cot]

> what's to prevent

Conceptually? Nothing.

But building such trains, at scale, takes a load of resources. Resources which could otherwise be used to build tanks, guns, missiles, and similar high-priority products.

[int_19h]

I would also imagine that large-scale retrofitting of traincars with variable gauge adaptations is something that would be hard for foreign intelligence services (including the Finnish one to miss) - and would then serve as a signal that Russia is indeed preparing for an invasion.

[IAmBroom]

Also:

> what's to prevent

Russian lack of logistical planning.

[theshrike79]

The difference between Finnish and Russian gauge is 4mm

IIRC the diff to European standard is closer to 10cm, still doable but a hurdle compared to just driving a trainload of troops to the middle of Helsinki it's a bit harder

[T-A]

First sentence from the article: The Finnish government has announced the conversion of its rail network from Russian gauge (1,524 mm) to European standard (1,435 mm).

1524 - 1435 = 89

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_ft_and_1520_mm_gauge_railway...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard-gauge_railway

[ta1243]

So "closer to 10cm" then

Clearly not "doable", without guage changing bogies.

[eqvinox]

The really annoying thing is that it's too close for "simple" dual gauge rails (e.g. 1435 + 1000); 1435 + 1524 is possible and in fact exists (e.g. the one single SE-FI railway bridge that exists is dual guage: https://openrailwaymap.org/?style=gauge&lat=65.8273204537081...), but AFAIK it's expensive because the mounts interfere and need to be quite custom.

[dotancohen]

  > The difference between Finnish and Russian gauge is 4mm

What is the acceptable tolerance? It doesn't sound like a huge engineering effort to design a boogie compatible with both without requiring switching.

[CapitalistCartr]

Train tracks are normally not precise to within 4mm anyway, and wheels are wide enough to tolerate that.

[iggldiggl]

> Train tracks are normally not precise to within 4mm anyway

Yes they are. Of course practical tolerances including allowances for wear and there are large enough that things can be made to work, but in terms of nominal construction tolerances for example, 4 mm can easily eat up all your construction tolerances or even exceed them.

[orthoxerox]

There used to be a St.Pete-Helsinki high-speed train before the war, Allegro. It was built with bogies for a 1522mm gauge.

[anticensor]

Yes, the acceptable tolerance is -4mm+7mm.

[iggldiggl]

Where? Finland specifically, or elsewhere? Both my local tram system in Germany as well as DB as the national infrastructure operator in Germany have construction tolerances of only +/- 2 mm. Maintenance tolerances on the other hand can be quite a bit larger, at least in the plus direction (on the order of 15/20/25 mm).

[adrianmsmith]

> 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?

[kibwen]

Even if Russia's conquest of Ukraine were to end tomorrow, they would take a few years to recover before mounting their next offensive. And Finland isn't first in line on their list of next invasion targets, that would be either Georgia, Moldova, or the Baltics.

And in any case, just as in computer security, a security posture does not need to be unassailable, it just needs to be expensive enough to deter the enemy. NATO countries (well, the ones that haven't already been compromised by Russia) will be happy to fund the gauge switch, as would the EU in general for the sake of greater economic integration. Meanwhile, it increases the costs on Russia and slows their advance. It's a win no matter what.

[sidewndr46]

Given the disaster that is the Ukrainian invasion, this doesn't really hold true. As long as leadership is OK with a total logistical clusterfuck, you don't need to worry about "years to recover" for your next offensive. The next offensive starts today. You can figure out the details as you go.

[FpUser]

>"Meanwhile, it increases the costs on Russia and slows their advance. It's a win no matter what."

Following logic it also increases your own costs and wastes money that could've been allocated to produce weapons and other more effective preventive measures.

[celticninja]

there are economic benefits to closer integration with the EU that the weapons would not provide.

[kibwen]

Fortunately, a country can pursue many things simultaneously, which is often more generally effective than pursuing a single thing to the detriment of all others, thanks to diminishing returns.

[FpUser]

>"...than pursuing a single thing..."

Where did I say about single thing: "...weapons and other more effective preventive measures..."

Looking from the other angle - should Russia attack it'll trigger article 5. Russia can not win conventional war with NATO. It is just laughable. They're not that suicidal. And if they are it'll escalate to nuclear and then the railroad will be your last worry.

[int_19h]

> that would be either Georgia, Moldova, or the Baltics.

Or Kazakstan, although China might object there.

[vintermann]

Russia can't just attack anywhere it wants to. Putin is not Kim Il-sung, he can't count on any order to be blindly obeyed. It took years of propaganda, unfortunately armed with a couple of actually good points (mostly supplied by the neonazi nationalist wing in Ukraine, who wanted a war), before he could try actually invading. He had to walk a dangerous game with his own, in particular with his own neonazi supporter Prigozhin, who could easily have come up on top in their inevitable conflict.

He's absolutely not harmless, but neither should we allow ourselves to be distracted by phony countermeasures against the Russian threat, like this gauge shift thing clearly is in my opinion.

[kibwen]

As you suggest, Russia's invasion of Ukraine was bolstered by Russian sympathizers in the east. Every country bordering Russia is incentivized to break free of any sort of alignment with Russia in order to reduce the threat of local insurgency which will aid Russia in its invasion. For example, the Baltic countries removing Russian from their list of official languages, in addition to decoupling from the Russian power grid. There are a lot of steps to be taken, and a lot of them will take decades. Fortunately, Russia's capacity to wage war measured against their number of potential targets means that it would take them decades to reconquer it all, assuming Europe steps up to fund the defense. Train gauge alignment is just one of many steps towards this end, and the sooner the better.

[rmind]

"Removing Russian from their list of official languages"? It was never an official language in the first place.

[vintermann]

The anti-Russian policies in the Baltics are dumb, they provide Putin with a good point to use in his propaganda, which is infinitely more useful to him than any railroad on foreign soil.

He's co-opting the red army's defeat of Nazi Germany for his own popularity purposes. Which is impressive, considering he's also disavowing communism. It would hardly have been possible, if it weren't for fringe (but not fringe enough) movements in Eastern Europe playing along with it. Not because they're pro-Russian, far from it, but because their old nationalist groups often were aligned with the nazis, and they want to rehabilitate them. Putin and these groups totally agree that the conflict should be framed as being between Russia and these groups.

[anonymars]

I think this overstates the challenges, especially given the last 10+ years of despots doing things they shouldn't just be able to do. Waking up one day to find that the US has invaded Canada is now a non-negligible possibility.

I think they are up to the challenge of whipping up some BS casus belli and scaring would-be protesters into submission.

[vintermann]

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.

[Retric]

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.

[vintermann]

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.

[Retric]

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.

[culopatin]

Wouldn’t it be simpler to make a “train moat” by disconnecting rails from Russia? Or would they run the trains on dirt for a mile and re attach?

[bobthepanda]

Building temporary bridges in wartime is pretty normal.

[qingcharles]

Always loved going over the border from France as a kid and they would lift the whole train up and slide the old wheels out and put the new ones in and off you go!