Deutsch

The Danish railroads are a sad story for this country. After some experiences as frequent transit traveler on the way from Denmark to Norway or Sweden it is possible to say this without being to much biased by singular experiences that are not representative. The observations all refer to the long distance and international transit transport by rail. The local and commuter train system of the Copenhagen area on Sjaelland seems to be quite OK.

First of all the Danish railroad is an absolute low speed system. It is said that some stretches are prepared for speeds of 140 km/h or even 180 km/h, but real IC trains hardly exceed an average speed of 50 km/h on longer distances, at least when regarding the bird flight distance or at least the shortest highway distance. For a relatively flat country having no elevation that reaches 200 m above sea level and for a country that is not that densely populated this looks like a bad value. I am talking about the connection from Flensburg in Germany to Fredrikshavn and Hirtshals, where no ferries are given reason for longer travel times.

The tracks are very curvy, making them longer than the highway and because of the speed restrictions in curves also slow. Important connections are still not electrified, to be more precise, only the transit railroad from Flensburg to Malmö via Kolding, Odense and Copenhagen, some short sections to Sonderburg and Fredericia and some lines on the main island Seeland are electric. But even fully electrified railroad lines are often used by Diesel trains. On longer trips it is often necessary to change the trains a lot of times, but this changes with every new schedule. The connections are often not so good, forcing waiting times of half an hour. Or if they are good, then they are missed quite often, because connecting trains do not even wait for two minutes on delayed trains with connecting passengers.

It gets especially interesting when trying to take bicycles on the train. The spots need to be reserved. Here some experiences:

• Reservation cannot be done via Internet or in the railroad station in Germany or Switzerland. The DSB hotline needs to be called.
• Calling the hotline means listing to music via the phone for at least half an hour. Not expensive these days, but annoying anyway.
• The hotline girl had created the tickets and wanted them to be picked up at some DSB railroad station of my choice, at least one day prior to my trip. So I would have needed to go to Denmark just to pick up the tickets. Very user friendly approach.
• Finally I could get the permission to pick up the tickets on the day I intended to travel. The night train from Germany left enough time for that when changing. It was not even eaten up by delay. But nobody knew about my tickets, of course.
• From counter 1 they sent me to counter 3, from there to counter 2 and from there back to counter 1. There were only three counters, so that was it…
• In a group of six persons it is necessary to split into different trains, because trains may have enough space for six bicycles, but that is of course forbidden.
• Taken tandems on the train is forbidden in Denmark. Sometimes it can be done anyway, but it is a matter of luck and friendliness if it is OK or if it leads to a disaster.
• The hotline person asked for a number to call me back, but expected me to have a Danish phone number.
• For going from Hamburg to Copenhagen by day train it is necessary to go a 160 km detour via Flensburg, because no train on the direct route transports bicycles.
• The connection is going only every two hours, so a delay of 25 minutes lead to two hours delay already. The train two hours later did have spare space, but the conductor withdrew her initial offer to use the train without reservation because of the delay. It ended up being only four hours delay, because the German railroad station employee could speak Danish and do the negotiations. In Copenhagen the train was three minutes late and the connecting train would have gone five minutes after the scheduled arrival. Of course they did not wait. There was another train one hour later, but it would only go to Alvesta, not all the way to Kalmar. This train did also more stops, so it was much slower. Going to Alvesta was anyway the plan, so it was OK, but in the end it took 5 1/2 hours more than originally planned. That is 12 hours from Hamburg to Malmö, what would be 300 km bird flight distance. And the German sections are already quite fast from Hamburg to Flensburg or Puttgarden.
• In the same time it would be possible to do that by bicycle, but transit travel by bicycle is strictly forbidden in Denmark, simply by imposing some short unavoidable bicycle prohibitions on the route.
• The rides when the air conditioning fails are nice. Especially if there is no water in the washing rooms, so water from the drinking bottle needs to be used for washing the hands. They did provide a tiny bottle of water on the expense of DSB to every traveler on the train.
• Because of track work there are often buses instead of trains, of course resulting in the loss of all connections. When traveling with a bicycle this even leads to loss of the reservation, see above…
• The Danish trains are often in a poor state, not compatible with the safety requirements in Germany. So it is resolved by forcing another transfer on the passengers and using the only intact train set as a shuttle for the stretch over the border.

It is also interesting to see the contrast, because Denmark is providing a luxury motorway network providing each village an motorway exit within only a few dozen kilometers distance and this is being expanded at an incredible rate. On the other hand railroad tracks are curvy low speed lines from the budget saving program from the 19th century and the national highways that have no bicycle prohibition are in a poor state and cross every hill and every valley without the slightest attempt to level out the road elevation by dams or cuts. Tunnels or bridges are hardly needed. Is it the intention of Danish transport policy to entirely move all transit traffic from environment friendly means of transportation to cars and air planes? Or are they just lacking the know-how how to build and operate a modern long distance railroad system, but are too proud to get this know-how from countries that have it?

As summary it can be said:
Denmark has no real railroad network, just a few overland tram lines, with speeds typical to the steam power days, but trams usually operate more frequently. This is also what other travelers are telling me. Maybe this is a bit of America in the middle of Europe.

Unfortunately it is not easy to bypass Denmark on the way to Sweden and Norway, but I am constantly looking for such possibilities.

At least in the long term some movement in a better direction might come. They have now announced to improve speed, build some high speed lines and electrify the major long distance lines. We will see if that is just vapor or if it ever becomes reality.

Links:

• Wikipedia: Rail Transport in Denmark
• Wikipedia: High Speed Rail in Denmark
• Wikipedia: Banedanmark (Railroad network operator)
• Wikipedia: DSB (passenger train operator)

Deutsch

Do cloverleaf interchanges for railroad lines exist?

I must admit that I do not know all railroad lines in the world, but I consider it highly unlikely that anywhere two railroad lines are connected by a cloverleaf. They do exist in games that need not be realistic in every aspect, but this page is not focussed on games or model railroads, so we will ignore this from now on. You might ask the railroad companies why, but at least it is highly plausible. First of all most connections between railroad lines happen in stations. This makes sense for allowing for passengers to change trains and for rearranging freight trains. But there are cases where two rail lines intersect without a major station. Examples that come to my mind are the lines from Darmstadt via Weinheim to Schwetzingen and the line from Mannheim to Heidelberg in Germany that intersect near Mannheim Friedrichsfeld. Or near Zürich were the lines from Wallisellen to Dübendorf and from Stettbach to Dietlikon intersect. The two main lines intersect using a bridge and then some of the connections are made possible using parially level crossings and partially bridges.

The first question is if bridges instead of level crossings are as important for rail as they are for roads. Because the signalling system provides exclusive use of a track to one train, even highspeed tracks may have grade crossings, as long as the switches are built in a way to allow high speed. This does not even slow down the high speed trains during normal operation. The highspeed train gets the track and all other trains have to wait. Schedules are usually made in a way that minimizes such waiting times, so they usually only occur to greater extent if some train is delayed. But if you look how railroad infrastructure has been built it will be obvious that bridges between different tracks are quite common, at least in busy sections of the network. Other than for road transport this is less an issue of speed and security and more an issue of capacity. The bridges allow for more simultaneous train moves and there are less situation in which one train blocks many tracks at the same time mostly near a station. This has been known in the 19th century and a typical construction for a station connecting two rail lines included a bridge for crossing over between the two lines coming from one end. Assuming lines coming from north, east, south and west and a station that is oriented from north west to south east, the lines from the north and the west enter on one side and those from the south and the east from the other side. With this bridge between the lines coming from north and from east the typical setup of trains going from north to south and from east to west allows all four directions to pass simultaneously if the lines are double track.

Typically level crossings are only avoided for combinations that are used frequently. Blocking some tracks by rare operations which might even happen during night times is not a priority.

But returning to the cloverleafs: They are not really grade separated and they would use tremendous amounts of space because of the minimal curve radius of railroad tracks.

Here is such a cloverleaf which has in a way level crossings („weaving“) in the red areas:

With low traffic densities and traffic consisting of small individual vehicles like bicycles, cars or trucks this works just fine. And a highway that seems to be filled with cars does not really have a very high traffic density because cars are so wasteful with space. As long as the traffic of two neighboring leaves combined is less than the capacity of one lane this can work. Otherwise even for highways other constructions that are really grade free and less space consuming, but more expensive to build seem to be more adequate. Some of them could actually work for railroads as well, because they widely avoid unnecessary curves.

Very elegant because it can be built with two levels and is anyway fully grade free. But not good for railroad tracks because of the 270°-bows. This does not work very well either for more than one roadway per direction.

This works for any number of tracks, road ways, bicycle ways, tram tracks, bus lanes and whatever combined by just adding more curves. But it needs four levels instead of two. The same principle works for combining throroughfares meeting in one point using levels for
At some point these interchanges grow so high and the ramps for the height differences so long that it would no longer be possible to build this, even with a lot of money. It is very unusual to see such constructions for .

Here are some more setups:

There are much more possibilities. Hopefully we won’t end up with something like this:

It is absolutely possible to connect any number of throughfares with any number of tracks, roadways bicycle lanes, bus lanes etc. avoiding 270°-bows and using just two levels in a fully grade free way. The idea is very simple and I just describe it for tracks for the sake of simplicity: All tracks have only one direction. The lower level carries tracks running from north to south and vice versa in the vicinity of the interchange, possibly turning wherever they really go. The upper level has tracks running from east to west and vice versa. Each incoming track splits into two tracks. On of them continues to the other side and only takes incoming connections. This is a collector. The other one only branches into curves connecting to the other tracks, called distributor. All tracks cross the field, using some space between different tracks. Whenever a collector and a distributor cross, the appropriate connection is present. After having crossed the whole field, for example from south to north, a distributor splits into two distributors going east and west until the last collector has been met. This allows for all possible connections in a fully grade free way and with no capacity constraints other than those imposed by the tracks leading and from the interchange. It needs very much space. And it is a theoretical construction, because in practice it seems to be sufficient to offer the most important connection in a grade free way. Real railroad interchanges are relatively compact, but the station or the yard that happens to be located at the interchange can be huge.

Deutsch

The European region north of the arctic circle in Finland, Norway and Sweden is often called „Cap of the North“ („Nordkalotten“ in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, or „Pohjoiskalotti“ in Finnish). That area is thinly populated, but there are some towns with a few 10’000 inhabitants and a more densely populated area in their vicinity, like Tromsø, Narvik, Alta, Harstad and Kiruna. I don’t want to take the arctic circle as a hard boundary, but rather write about rail projects in the north of these three countries, at least those I have heard of. Railroad construction in this area is mainly motivated by freight traffic. The Iron Ore Line from Narvik to Kiruna has been built to access the huge iron ore deposits in northern Sweden, mostly Kiruna. Now northern Sweden contains further iron ore deposits and also in northern Finland a lot of mining, mostly for iron ore, could be possible. Finland has already been called the „new Australia“ because of that. Even northern Norway contains some smaller share of iron ore deposits, mostly in the area of Kirkenes near the Russian border. This mine is the reason for the northernmost railroad in Norway connecting the sea port of Kirkenes with the mine, being just a few kilometers long. Because of declining profitability mine and railroad had already been closed down, but because of increasing demand and increasing prices for iron ore, they have been reopened.

The railroad to Narvik does not have any connection to the remaining Norwegian railroad network via Norway. The Nordland Line is running from Trondheim to Bodø. Bodø is situated pretty much half way through the whole country, between the Swedish border in the south in Svinesund and Grense Jakobselv at the Russian border in the northeast. Since the 1920es plans have existed to build this railroad line, but not only to Bodø, but also the Polar Line to Kirkenes and Vadsø in the northeast. During the second world war the construction of these lines was accelerated, which resulted in parts of the line from Trondheim to Bodø being built, even though the whole line was opened in 1962. North of Fauske and Bodø to Narvik some tunnels, bridges and railroad dams have been built, some which have been incorporated into the highway E6. Today a railroad to Kirkenes and Vadsø can no longer be considered reasonable, because the train would no longer be the only means of transport, since the area has been well equipped with highways, ports and airports. The number of inhabitants is too low to justify daily passenger trains in a situation where other means of transport exist. Even freight traffic is covered well by ships and trucks in this relation. The part of northern Norway north of Tromsø has so little population, that its contribution to air pollution created by Norway is not very significant.

Another question is the extension of the Nordland Line from Fauske to Narvik, Harstad and Tromsø. In this case a railroad from Trondheim to Tromsø with branches to Bodø, Narvik and Harstad could be imagined. This is a project that is discussed in Norway every couple of years, but it does not seem to have priority. Connecting towns and cities with somewhat more significant population this could provide potential for running freight and passenger trains several times per day with an acceptable number of passenger and acceptable amount of freight. A problem is the Tysfjord, which cannot easily be crossed or bypassed. In spite of almost unlimited resources for highway construction it has not been possible to build a ferry free section of the highway E6 between Fauske and Narvik. For a railroad three scenarios could be considered:

• Ferry Line: The railroad leads to the fjord, probably to Drag, and is trajected by a railroad ferry, going to Narvik and Lødingen. This would allow for integration of Harstad, but the ferry would probably make the rail connection too unattractive to compete with highway, ship and air transport. So this variant will probably no longer be considered, if the line is ever built.
• Fjord Line: The railroad follows the eastern shore of Tysfjord, with many tunnels.
• Mountain Line: The railroad runs near the Swedish border across the mountain range, intersecting with the Iron Ore Line from Kiruna to Narvik near Bjørnfjell, this allowing for a branch to Narvik by just providing a connection.

More concrete than this are connections from the coast inland. Finland has lost its ice free port in Petsamo in the Arctic Sea during the second world war. It is no longer such a big deal because ice breakers have become more of an option, allowing even otherwise frozen ports in the Baltic Sea to stay open during the winter. The relationship between Norway and Finland is now good and Norwegian ports can be used by Finish companies. But trucks are not very useful for transporting huge quantities of iron ore. Such plans do exist for accessing a new mine near Pajala in northern Sweden using 90 ton trucks between the mine and the next railroad connection in Svappavara. It has even been authorized. But there are downsides. The highway and the bridges will be used up in as little as five years and the houses near the highway will need triple glass in an area where there were just a few cars per hour. There will be a 90 ton truck every two minutes, day and night. In the long run a railroad might be a better solution. In principle several options exist for connecting the new iron ore mining areas in northern Finland and Sweden with the sea ports that have been discussed recently:

• Connections to the south via the existing railroad network to the south to Swedish and Finish ports (Kemi, Oulu, Luleå,…)
• Connections going south or east via the Finish railroad network to Russia.k
• Construction of a new railroad line from Pajala and northern Finalnd to Skibotn in Norway.
• Construction of a new railroad line from Pajala and northern Finalnd to Kirkenes in Norway.
• Construction of a new railroad line from Pajala and northern Finalnd to Svappavara.

It needs to be considered that Finland and Russia are using broad gauge (1520 mm in Russia, 1524 mm in Finland), while Sweden and Norway are using standard auge (1435 mm). While the difference between Russia and Finland is within the tolerance, having to change the track gauge is a hardly acceptable obstacle for freight traffic. The Iron Ore Line from Kiruna to Narvik is already quite congested, so there is not really much spare capacity for providing connections to other mines. But its capacity is extended to some extent by providing more and longer two track sections for allowing trains to meet and by improving the track bed for allowing higher axle loads of 30 tons.

Skibotn is a village with 700 inhabitants having just a small boat harbor. A port for huge sea ships could be built there, but it would be completely new. Also the slope from there to Finland is quite steep making it quite expensive, but still possible to build a railroad. Being in Skibotn in 2012 I have been told that this connection is no longer seriously considered.

Kirkenes already has the rail line for the first few kilometers, but in 1435 mm, which would have to be converted to 1524 mm. If the line is built, it will have to pass Lake Inari in the east or in the west. Kirkenes already has a sea port with options for extending its capacity. Other than Skibotn Kirkenes might have some potential for passenger traffic, maybe for one daily train. Because it is the northeastern end of the Hurtigruten it is a relevant tourist destination. Consideration exist also to connect Kirkenes to the Russian railroad network.

Already south of the arctic circle it is worth mentioning that a new railroad line from Boden to Happaranda has been opened in 2012 running parallel to the shore of the Baltic Sea and shortening the trackage significantly. A huge drawback of the Swedish railroad network north of Sundsvall is that the trunk railroad lines have been built far away from the coast for military strategic reasons, leaving the connection of the major towns and cities which are near the coast to branch lines. This is no longer very competitive in these days. This has been fixed to some extent by the Bothnia Line running from Sundsvall to Umeå somewhat near the coast. This is a mostly single track high speed railroad line opened in 2010. An extension from Umeå to Luleå (near Boden) is considered as North Bothnia Line.

Links:

• Her kan det bli ny jernbane (Norwegian)
• Tromsbanen på sporet (Norwegian)
• Polar Line
• Northern Norway Line