Railway pictures (12)

Good evening, lads. It's been a while!


FSRR QCTBO @ Orizaba, Ver. by Mathieu Tremblay, on Flickr

Last Monday train drivers begun a strike in Finland. After seeing Helsingin Sanomat photo reportage from Helsinki train depot in Ilmala showing lots of parked trains I decided today to check out if I could snap anything similar (although those photo in HS were aerial (drone) photos), especially as this morning the news reported that the negotiations between the union and the employer have reached an agreement and strike is ending and thus tomorrow morning trains should be running as scheduled.

1. Locomotives and double-decker IC cars


2. Significant portion of the VR fleet


3. Although few of the trains shown are either retired or reserves, eg. Allegro trains that used to go between Helsinki and St.Petersburg are currently out of use as Russian invasion into Ukraine halted rail traffic between Finland and Russia


4. The fence made it bit hard to photograph these trains


5. Normally, these local trains would been shuttling around the Finnish capital region


6. Sm4 (with white and green livery) and Sm5 (livery with purple) units


7. Various pieces from the VR fleet


8. I found quite decent vantage point to see the northwestern part of the depot railyard

I eccho Kelly's comments. We've had occasional strikes here for months, the government have offered pay rises that are well below the inflation rate so understandably the workers are not pleased.

As you likely know, we haven't had much of a passenger rail system here in the USA for quite a while other than subways in some large cities. We have light rail here in Utah that a few use to commute to work, but I think the percentage of commuters riding light rail is very small compared with those that drive. Consequently, we have an air quality problem here in the Salt Lake Valley. The city at one time had quite an extensive trolley/streetcar system, but that was scrapped when people were able to afford automobiles. All the tracks were removed. Big mistake! Now the city had been trying to reintroduce rail, but have had to start from scratch.
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