IntroductionThis blog post is about the High Speed Rail of the three Scandinavian countries. First of all we need to find out which countries they are. The three Scandinavian countries are Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The most exciting part of today's blog post will be Denmark as it is the newest. This post will talk about the destinations, history and trains of the Scandinavian High Speed Rail. Denmark's High Speed RailFor an extremely long time, Denmark didn't have High Speed Rail. The Danish government called it the Hour Model and this was the first High Speed link but even before that up to the year 2000, Denmark had other small tracks that came from Germany and Sweden. The Hour Model only began planning in 2013 and 2014 and there were 3 different stages to the construction. The first stage is the most popular one. It is the Copenhagen to Ringsted line which is an new 250 km/h train line between Copenhagen and Ringsted and the first stage will also include the upgrade of the Ringsted to Odense line. This will be in place from 2022. The second stage is from Aarhus to Aalborg which are a bit far from Copenhagen and a long while from Odense. Again, this stage is just upgrading the existing track to high speed rail and trains will be able to run 200 km/h to 250 km/h. The last stage is to connect everything altogether. This means you could take one train from Copenhagen to Aalborg. The last stage will be from Odense to Aarhus. This line is the most expensive and most complex bit of the line to complete and was thought to be started in 2020 but now its even harder and has been pushed back all the way to 2030. Sweden's High Speed RailCurrently, most Swedish trains run at 200 km/h but it isn't really considered as high speed rail. There are 2 series of trains that are allowed to run at 205 km/h but that is all. Other trains are also being considered as the fleet that will be able to run at 305 km/h. Existing track is soon being upgraded from 200 km/h capable to 250 km/h capable meaning existing track will soon be high speed. Other new tracks are being built to be even up to 320 km/h. Norway's High Speed RailCurrently, Norway only has 1 high speed rail link that opened in 1998. It is a 64 kilometre track between Oslo and a little town named Eidsvoll. The train also goes through the airport and acts like a shuttle from the city to the airport. The reason why the government even bothered to create a high speed track is because the airport is 48 kilometres away. Strangely enough, you have to leave the region of Oslo to get to Oslo airport. This soon won't be a lone track in Norway it will be greeted by another track named the Follo line. It is a 22 km tunnel from Oslo to a small suburban city named Ski. Talk about being green, this amazing track will remove 5800 car journeys a day, 750 trucks a day and eliminate more than 5,000 tons of C02 per year!
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IntroductionWelcome back. I'm saying this because I haven't uploaded a lot. I will try my best to release a new episode every week. This episode is about Russia's High Speed Rail and the Trans-Siberian Railway. This means this episode will be kinda split into two parts. We are going to see if Russia has a High Speed Rail network and the evolution of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Also, HAPPY HALOWEEN! Does Russia have a High Speed Rail network?Surprisingly, Russia has High Speed Rail. They have many routes that even come from Helsinki in Finland. The different routes that Russia have are the Sapsan train which goes from Moscow to St. Petersburg, the Alstom train which goes from Helsinki to St. Petersburg, the Swift train to Nizhny Novgorod, the Moscow to Berlin Swift train, the Desiro train from St. Petersburg to Veliky Novgorod and the Nevsky express. These are all the different routes of High Speed Rail in Russia. The first one is called the Sapsan train and it is the oldest. The other lines are much, much newer. The History of the Trans-Siberian RailwayThe Trans-Siberian Railway is one of the longest train routes in the world covering all of Russia and even some of China, Mongolia and South Korea. It took a long time, a lot of people and a lot of money to construct the Trans-Siberian Railway. It started construction in 1891 and ended in 1904. This means the link is very old but new routes have been added after its completion. The railway was only built to connect Moscow and the European part of Russia to Siberia. It was hard to transport goods by boat because during the winter, ferry boats were not usable and horses were slow on the iced rivers. Building roads and maniting them would be even harder and nobody wanted to do anything with roads so the only other way was to build a railway. Many projects were proposed and even different ones were all declined and took them 10 years to finally find a project everybody wanted. A European financer named Baron Henri Hottinguer who said the project would cost 35 million pounds. To create the rail network, 62,000 men were hired. What the Trans-Siberian is nowAfter over 100 years, the network had some changes. The route goes from Moscow to Vladivostok which are both in Russia but the rail goes through Beijing and Mongolia as well. (Vladivostok is at the very edge of Russia next to Japan). New tours and routes by different companies are being made all the time. One company is selling a ticket to the Trans-Siberian and is also saying they have luxury cabins and everything. Sadly, there are a lot of fake scams and the safest is to buy your ticket at the Moscow station a few days before. Because I don't live there, I can't tell you the price but the Sapsan train is very cheap. It is only around $200 per person two ways.
IntroductionEurostar is a huge part of Europe's High Speed Rail but if you see actually how big the network is, you'll be surprised. Eurostar doesn't have a very large network and it is only located in 4 countries. Britain, France, Belgium and The Netherlands. The main link is from London to Paris but before we talk about the routes, stations and all other things, let's talk about who created the link and when it first opened. The tunnel between the English Channel first got to work in 1974 but got aborted and was restarted in 1986. It was in planning for two years until it started construction in 1988. The tunnel took a long time to finish and finished in 1993. How It StartedThe tunnel wasn't touched by trains for a year and the first service was on the 14th of November 1994 and it ran from London Waterloo International Station to Paris Gare du Nord in France and to Brussels in Belgium. In 1995, Eurostar trains were going as high as 171.5 km/h and in 1996 a second station, Ashford International opened. This meant that people could come from 2 different stations in London. In 2007, people now came from London St Pancras instead of Waterloo because they needed to refurbish the station. Not many things were done after that. Now let's look at the records. The English Channel tunnel has the longest bit of underwater track. In Britain, a Eurostar train went 334 km/h and that was the fastest in all of Britain. Regional FranceThe train from London can take 3 turns. One to Paris, one to Belgium and the Netherlands and one to regional France. They go through Disneyland and at Lyon station, the train can turn to go to Marseille or Bourg-St-Maurice where the train finally terminates. The full service takes 7 hours and 51 minutes. The line opened at the same time as all the other routes and is the route that has the least amount of records and milestones so many people don't acknowledge this route. It is also the least used past Disneyland. I also love that Disneyland gets its own station! The Rest of ItThere isn't much after that except for Belgium and the Netherlands. What I love about the Eurostar is that everything starts in London and then the train takes a route to either Paris, France or Belgium and the Netherlands. Belgium has the station Brussels and Antwerp and the London train turns after Lille station. It goes past the Belgium-Netherlands border and arrives in Rotterdam and then Amsterdam where it goes back to London and starts the route again. The CostsI'm going to save you the pain of looking online for tickets and do it myself so you can use the information. The price comes in a few different ways. The cheapest tickets from London to Paris are the earliest trains and latest trains between Tuesday and Friday. The standard ticket for the first, second and last route is 85 euros or $134. All other times are 102 euros or $161 one way. To go to Regional France, there are only 2 - 3 trains per day and each ticket is approximately 150 euros or $237. The last route is London to Amsterdam. Each ticket is around 100 euros to $170. The Eurostar also has different classes but for a 2 hour trip I don't think it's worth it. ImagesImage 1 is a map of the rail link, Image 2 is an image of the train, Image 3 is the Business Lounge you get access to if you have a Business Premier ticket and Image 4 is and image of the station, London St Pancras.
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AuthorI'd love to share my knowledge about trains with the world. Archives
May 2022
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Photo used under Creative Commons from Tutenkhamun Sleeping