The Main Line was first time opened on March 17, 1862; at that time, the 108-kilometre railway line only stretched between Helsinki and Hämeenlinna.
The railway passes Helsinki, Riihimäki, Hämeenlinna, Tampere, Parkano, Seinäjoki, Kokkola, Ylivieska and Oulu. The future Suomirata project aims to improve the current Riihimäki-Tampere section either by building additional tracks on the existing main line or an entirely new straight line. The goal is to reduce the travel time from Tampere to Helsinki from the current 1 hour 33 minutes to about an hour.
Passenger trains are operated by the state-owned enterprise VR that runs services on 7,225 km of track. These services cover all major cities and many rural areas, though the coverage is less than the coverage provided by the bus services.
Most passenger train services originate or terminate at Helsinki Central railway station, and a large proportion of the passenger rail network radiates out of Helsinki. VR also operates freight services. Maintenance and construction of the railway network itself is the responsibility of the Finnish Rail Administration, which is a part of the Finnish Transport Agency, in Finnish Väylävirasto, in Swedish Trafikledsverket.
The network consists of six areal centres, that manage the use and maintenance of the routes in co-operation. Cargo yards and large stations may have their own signalling systems.
Finnish trains have a reputation for being spacious, comfortable and clean. The scenery surrounding the railway lines is considered to be of outstanding natural beauty, especially in Eastern Finland with its many lakes. Because in most parts of Finland the density of population is low, Finland is not very well suited for railways.
More information: VR
Commuter services are nowadays rare outside the Helsinki area, but there are express train connections between most of the cities. As in France, passenger services are mostly connections from various parts of the country to the capital, Helsinki.
Nightly passenger trains only operate on the busiest lines between Helsinki or Turku via Oulu to Lapland. This leaves most of the tracks free for nightly freight traffic (c.40 M tons/y. In addition there are also good long-distance bus and airplane connections, both of which are generally little or a lot more expensive than trains. Buses are sometimes faster and/or cheaper than trains.
The first rail line between Helsinki and Hämeenlinna (today part of the Finnish Main Line) was opened on January 31, 1862.
As Finland was then the Grand Duchy of Finland, a region of Imperial Russia, railways were built to the broad Russian track gauge of 1,524 mm. An extension from Riihimäki to the new Finland Station in Saint Petersburg was opened in 1870. However, the Finnish and Russian rail systems remained unconnected until 1912. Russian trains could not have used the Finnish rail network due to a narrower load gauge. Later the Finnish load gauge was widened to match the Russian load gauge, with hundreds of station platforms or tracks moved further apart from each other.
Further expansion occurred in the 1800s and by 1900 much of the network had been constructed with 3,300 km of track built.
The Finland Railway Bridge across the River Neva in Saint Petersburg, opened in 1912, connected the Finnish State Railways to Russian Railways. Following Finnish independence, the Russian part of the line was handed over to Russian authorities.
Most passenger rail services in Finland radiate from Helsinki Central, serving most major cities including Tampere, Turku, Oulu, Rovaniemi, Kouvola, Kuopio, Jyväskylä and Joensuu among others. Some towns are connected to the rail network by their own branch lines, yet are not served by passenger trains; examples include Porvoo, Uusikaupunki, Raahe and Rauma.
More information: Finland Trains
to the glorious and the unknown.
Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine,
to them, alas! we return.
E. M. Forster
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