European Railroad Discussion > Finland: Allegro and Leo Tolstoy

1,2. "Allegro" type Sm6 and Sr1 with "Leo Tolstoy" train at Helsinki railway station.
3. "Allegro" leaving Tikkurila station on the way to St.Petersburg.

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Nice pictures ! Where are these trains going to / coming from ? Thanks....

gaspeamtrak Wrote:
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> Nice pictures ! Where are these trains going to /
> coming from ? Thanks....

It says right in the introduction ......
sheesh ....

 

Will MacKenzie
Dundas, ON

Leo Tolstoy is the overnight train to and from Moscow.

Thank you .
You tell where it says the Leo Tolstoy is the over night train from Moscow in the caption???
Just asking and some people get so upset...
Some people think they no it all "sheesh"
Enough said...:)

86235 Wrote:
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> Leo Tolstoy is the overnight train to and from
> Moscow.

Nice photos, Stas.  I believe the Tolstoy (the train pictured) is the train from Moscow to Helsinki and the Sibelius is the train from Helsinki to Moscow.  Gerry

These are running on European standard gauge, right?  

Do they swap out trucks somewhere?  I can imagine there being a European Gauge line from Helsinki to St. Petersburg, but not from St. Peteresburg to Moscow...  

Thanks for the pics, 

Ted in OR

No, Finland as a former province of Imperial Russia is 5' gauge territory.

The strange part is that Russia and Finland do not share the same track gauge, it is just that they are close enough that it doesn't usually cause problems.
Russia 1520mm gauge.
Finland 1524mm gauge.

SOO6617 Wrote:
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> The strange part is that Russia and Finland do not
> share the same track gauge, it is just that they
> are close enough that it doesn't usually cause
> problems.
> Russia 1520mm gauge.
> Finland 1524mm gauge.

I didn't realise, thanks. Isn't that similar to Portugal and Spain where the nominal 66" gauge differs by a few mm depending on whether you're in Spain or Portugal?

86235 Wrote:
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> SOO6617 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > The strange part is that Russia and Finland do
> not
> > share the same track gauge, it is just that
> they
> > are close enough that it doesn't usually cause
> > problems.
> > Russia 1520mm gauge.
> > Finland 1524mm gauge.
>
> I didn't realise, thanks. Isn't that similar to
> Portugal and Spain where the nominal 66" gauge
> differs by a few mm depending on whether you're in
> Spain or Portugal?
Sort of. Actually, both Finland's and Russia's' railroads were originally built to a gauge of 5 feet (supposedly because the engineer hired by the Czar to build the Moscow - St. Petersburg railroad was an American from the South, who was most familiar with 5' gauge so decided to use it in Russia, and at that time, Finland was part of Russia, so used the same gauge). 1524 mm is the exact conversion of 5' to metric units, and was adopted whenever Russia (or the Soviet Union - I'm not sure when it was) adopted the metric system. However, in later years, the Soviets decided to "round off" the number to 1520 mm, while Finland stuck with the 1524 mm number. The difference is so small that it is not normally noticed, and probably would make no difference even with wheelsets made to very close tolerances (for high speed trains, for example).

I believe the same thing happened in Spain and Portugal: railroads there were built to a gauge of 5 Spanish feet (the old Spanish foot differs slightly from the British-American or "Imperial" foot)  which converts to 1668 mm, but fairly recently the Spanish railroads made it 1665 mm. Neither one converts to 66" (65-5/8" is the usual conversion); when Argentina and Chile imported some "lightly-used" Spanish locomotives and cars some years ago, they had to change the wheelsets to the proper 1676 mm to avoid problems on turnouts and slightly "spread" sections.

Roger Lewis (airbrakegeezer)