European Railroad Discussion > Finland: Exciting News!

For Finnish Railway's enthusiast these weeks are full of excitement. Several decades of monopoly period with VR-Yhtymä as practical monopoly handling all freight and all passenger service are finally over. A new star is born: Fennia Rail will start freight operations on Finnish 1524 mm network in 2015. The story of crumbling monopoly has been extremely long and painful, with VR matching every move the to-be-competitors so far have been able to throw at it. VR has even gone so far that no working rolling stock is ever kept, if it not needed, just about everything extra has been scrapped for several decades now. With excellent results for VR: as there has been no available rolling stock, no competition has either existed before. The only freight operation with national license before Fennia Rail was Ratarahti Oy, better known as Imatran Veturipalvelu Oy, but they are more interested in feeding the pulp mills of Imatra, Finland than starting operations themselves. Actually their hands are quite full of work with those mills alone.

Fennia Rail story started materialize this year with several investors buying the stock of Proxion Rail and acquiring capital to start operations. Proxion Rail had operations license for several years but was never able to start operations, mainly because it lacked capital to acquire locomotion and freight cars. This has now been fixed with Fennia Rail starting operations with three CZ Loko built Chem3-M locomotives (which despite their name have little to do with the Soviet locomotive with almost the same name). Model M is powered with Caterpillar prime mover and modern style low hoods with an excellent cab visibility.

More will follow in summer 2015!

Godspeed Fennia Rail! (this is the phrase Apollo Astronauts were sent to their voyages to space with)

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Very interesting, John. Is there any indication where they will operate? Gerry

No, not yet. But I imagine getting customers wishing to move away from rubber wheeled vehicles might be possible. One of the possible bigger customers may be bigger paper / pulp mills, like the one in Kuusankoski, operated by UPM. Today they ship one container every few minutes on truck because VR services are so overpriced. I imagine even running the truck train with two 40' containers in row does not solve the price issue, on train you can easily handle a 30 freight car rake say twice of three times a day. Next to this paper mill is a sizable rail yard. This leads to 75 kilometers of double track with practically no traffic at all. At the other end is Kotka harbor. Or you can pick any one of the other competing harbors nearby, several alternatives exist as the harbor business never was monopolized.

There are about 20 of similar size paper mills in Finland, some of them are several times larger in capacity (like the one we visited driving on locomotive in Imatra a few years ago with you).

And I know about 20 other smaller industries / plants that are going to contact Fennia Rail (not the other way round), just to get their logistics nightmares with VR solved.

GPutz Wrote:
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> Very interesting, John. Is there any indication
> where they will operate? Gerry


Here is a picture of the other operator's Move 90 type locomotive. They are currently leasing this out to Destia (MOW company). This summer it was handling work trains in Jyväskylä area, in the middle Finland. Note the Russian built new hoppers in the background.

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McKey Wrote:
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> "The story of crumbling monopoly
> has been extremely long and painful, with VR
> matching every move the to-be-competitors so far
> have been able to throw at it. VR has even gone so
> far that no working rolling stock is ever kept, if
> it not needed, just about everything extra has
> been scrapped for several decades now. With
> excellent results for VR: as there has been no
> available rolling stock, no competition has either
> existed before."
>
>
>
That is an interesting way of eliminating competition. We see how in the US one railway will buy a line and never use it or even rip it out even if someone else would pay to use it. Sounds like Fennia Rail has a bright future.

Like the pictures.

Jim

Let's hope so!

& thanks Jim!

tq-07fan Wrote:
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> Sounds like Fennia Rail has a bright future.
>
> Like the pictures.
>
> Jim

I guess much depends on the size and sharpness of the teeth of the regulator. If, as in some European countries, they are relatively ineffective the dominant provider will continue to obstruct new entrants, or at the very least make it extremely difficult to provide effective competition. Hopefully Finland will equip its rail regulator with the necessary weaponry to keep VR in check.

Just my thoughts too, in many other areas the regulator has teeth of a predator here, with excellent results for the market. But for some reason, rail traffic, taxi driving and keeping a pharmacy have so far been outside the scope. We will see what will happen by 2016. Hopefully Fennia Rail will show an example to others that this kind of new move can now be done, despite sharp teeth on VR too. I think that by now, as VR has been cornered after its own suspected monopolistic moves, it must realize that playing this time with rough weapons might lead to it being split like happened some years ago in Sweden to SJ.

86235 Wrote:
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> I guess much depends on the size and sharpness of
> the teeth of the regulator. If, as in some
> European countries, they are relatively
> ineffective the dominant provider will continue to
> obstruct new entrants, or at the very least make
> it extremely difficult to provide effective
> competition. Hopefully Finland will equip its rail
> regulator with the necessary weaponry to keep VR
> in check.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/14 09:00 by McKey.

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