European Railroad Discussion > Other contributors: European stations.

Andersonb's great series has ended, he says, so maybe a few of us can chime in with our own. He just told me he didn't have a night shot of the statues, so I led off with that. Beautiful station in Helsinki.

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Good looking station, and nice to see the night shot. chris uk

Many thanks for posting. I caught the Pendolino train for Turku from here. I also bought a book on the history of the Helskinki railway station. I found interesting a photo of Czar Nicholas the 2nd on a station platform prior to the official opening.

As I mentioned in a PM to the poster, those stone men are quite famous in Finland. They appear in animated television advertisements for the railways passenger service as well as in print ads where they break out of the station and come alive. They are a great marketing tool. 

Yes, they look quite formidable, but they can be fun.  Gerry
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andersonb109 Wrote:
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> As I mentioned in a PM to the poster, those stone
> men are quite famous in Finland. They appear in
> animated television advertisements for the
> railways passenger service as well as in print ads
> where they break out of the station and come
> alive. They are a great marketing tool. 

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Finland has long been in the Russian / Soviet orbit.  It was a province or protectorate for centuries.

I believe the Finnish railways use Russian gauge railway stock

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
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> Finland has long been in the Russian / Soviet
> orbit.  It was a province or protectorate for
> centuries.
>
> I believe the Finnish railways use Russian gauge
> railway stock

Quite literally -- Finland uses the original Russian gauge of 5 ft or 1,524 mm, whereas this was later rounded down to 1,520 mm in the Soviet Union, meaning that officially, the track gauge in Finland is now 4 mm wider than than that in Russia (side note: after independence, Estonia officially re-adopted 1,524 mm as well).

However, the 4 mm difference is well within the tolerance of both the 1,520 and 1,524 mm realms, meaning that despite the small discrepancy, they are operationally compatible.

Interesting, thank you.

Posted from Android

Suomi (Finland is a Swedish word) was part of Sweden from around 1200 AD.  But the indigineous people there had a completely different language (Suomeksi) than Swedish.  It's not like Russian either.  In 1809 the King of Sweden and the Czar of Russia had a dust up and Sweden lost Finland to Russia.  That's the last war Sweden was involved in.  So, the first railroads in Finland were built by the Russians.  In 1917 for some unknown and/or disputed reason or reasons Lennin didn't include Finland in the USSR, and it became independent for the first time after a brief civil war.  But, Finland has always been intimidated by Russia.  It's not part of NATO, but considered joining when Russia grabbed Crimea.  It is in the Eurpean Union and uses the Euro currency.

Gerry
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Lackawanna484 Wrote:
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> Finland has long been in the Russian / Soviet
> orbit.  It was a province or protectorate for
> centuries.
>
> I believe the Finnish railways use Russian gauge
> railway stock

They're also train spotters.  I don't have the translation for this anymore, but it's something like:

Look at the new intercity train.  (Juna means train)
No (Ei) it's a new (class) SM4 local train.

Gerry

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