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 Estonia is a relatively small country with flat terrain, making it easy to build railroad lines on. The existing railroad infrastructure has been put into proper working order during the 2 decades of regained independence of the country. Nothing of whatever new of greater significance has been built since however, which is highly unusual for the West European country. Even the slow operating speeds exist, which has made the passenger traffic on Estonian rails loose it's market to private cars, buses. On the freight side the situation is sometimes so bad, that no railconnection is any more provided to major wood processing plants, and all is done with trucks! What little exists is mainly Russian raw materials exports through the Estonian ports. As Estonia for long was part of the Soviet Union, no renewals were common in those days. This today means running trains partly on over 100 years old lines, the same speed that was used 100 years ago! Some light is shed with the European Union starting a feasibility study on the Rail Baltica, which would also aim to revive the infrastructure once and for all and put the rails back in business and into competition with the road traffic.  Eesti Raudtee GE C36-7i number 1529 has just started an empty tank train from the Muuga departures yard near Tallinn. The flyover crosses the higway, rail line snaking a few kilometers south along the river and turns to east towards Russia, where many heavy freights originate. The American C30-7i and C36-7i locomotives are blamed to be the major infrastructure destroyers and have since 2010 spent much of their time in the depot. The locos are replaced mostly with equally powerful, but lighter Russian locomotives. Picture by John McKey. Ownership of the infrastructure European Union member countries have a separated ownership of infra from the operations. In Estonia this has become partly reality just recently, in 2009 the ownership of the infra and operations within the Eesti Rautee were separated. This is pretty much the same model that is aimed to be used in U.K. In other countries the infra is normally owned by the state. However, it seems like the Edelraudtee still owns the infrastructure it operates, this being about 1/4 of the total networks in Estonia. Separating the infrastructure ownership for the Eesti Raudtee (Estonian Railways) was made to encourage open access and competitive environment by allowing everyone with certain limitations fulfilled to run the trains. Also the aspect of open accounts became truer, since two separate cost places now exist.  The arrangement before the year 2009 of the ownership and operations combined to one company dated back to the first regained independence years when the EVR (Eesti Raudtee) was owned by the American holding company. In the U.S. the infrastructure owner may be the same as the operator. From the European viewpoint this can be seen as a limitation to the competitive market economy: think about if every trucking company would build a road of its own or a marine shipping company should build a harbor of its own. That would really severely limit the competition, make use of the lines less optimal and push prices higher for everyone. So why make raillines different from any other form of transportation with a monopoly? Thus most raillines in the European Union countries are shared with numerous operators!  The numbers The total length of the raillines is just over 1000 kilometers (around 630 miles), of which only 116 km double track (The Soviets did not see double track necessary in it's satellites, in East Germany for example much of the double track built pre WW2 period was changed to a single track). The northern lines, majority of all lines, are in the ownership of Eesti Rautee Infra part, while the Edelraudtee owns the lines stretching south from Tallinn and Tartu. The EVR (Eesti Raudtee) lines are well equipped for heavy traffic while the Edelraudtee lines are built mainly for the lighter passenger traffic. 130 kilometers around Tallinn is electrified with 3000V DC catenary wires, hang lower than the norm in Europe (outside U.K.) or Russia. Gauge for the Estonian railnetworks today is 1520 mm (5ft) outside the Tallinn tramway. Earlier some narrow gauge operations existed too. With the European Union aid a lot of roads have been built in the recent years, and now it seems like some attention is wisely directed towards the rail lines too. Rail Baltica is the most important new rail project, 1435 (normal gauge) track connecting Tallinn Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland with Berlin in just a few hours. This will definitely boost the interaction of the Baltic people with the main central Europe, bring the people together and bring prosperity for everyone involved. If you look at the operations and raillines, it would appear that even today most of the infrastructure dates back to the preWW2 period of the first independence or Soviet thinking of the railoperations. These leave room for a lot of important improvement, of the idea is not to change all road society. The following list of needed improvements is picked from the frequent visitors viewpoint, so forgive if some might be misunderstood. In that case please send a notice. Improvements needed for the passenger rail The line speeds are currently far below the levels that is necessary for making the rail lines competitive against road traffic. While the passenger levels seem still to be high, these will decline sharply if no investments is done in the near future. The European Union should take the main responsibility on the financial side since the road fund are coming from the same source as well. Some steps toward new passenger rail line have been taken now in the form of feasibility study.  Station platforms: At the beginning of the railroad era in the 19th century and early 20th centure the trains were much smaller and moving earth to create track bed and platforms was done manually by showels. This naturally lead to lower and very short station platforms. High steps on coaches were provided to board the trains. Most of the stations still have this kind of low and short platforms, in some places accompanied close by by a huge high structures from the Soviet period.  The Soviet period platforms typically are very high concrete structures and in most stations very short. Probably the idea has been direct access without steps to the trains, a good from accessibility point, but at the same time the steps are instead where the super high platform starts. So we are expecting that there will be "paneuropean" around 50 cm (20 inches) high platforms in Estonia as well. Most newer rolling stock we would imagine Estonia to acquire for its future passenger needs would be low floor direct access with most access doors at 50 cm. See the Stadler Flirt family of trains as an example. These are in operation or are coming into operation in European Union members / nonmembers like Finland, Poland, Norway, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, France, to name a few. Estonia has also decided on the fleet of 18 Flirt trains to modernize it's railroad operations. These will be in traffic starting year 2012. There are also going to be 10 + 10 optional GTW2/X units, similar to the ones used by DB Arriva in the Netherlands in the picture below.  The freight network part will be added here later, but its worth mentioning that many stations have too short sidings to accommodate any larger trains and there definitely would also be need for more double tracked lines, especially since its wise from the economical viewpoint to share the track between freight and passenger operations.  A Vaivara station in Northern Estonia. There are numerous beautiful station buildings that could easily be restored to glory of their past. The beginnings As with most other European countries, the Estonian railroad infrastructure was started in the 19th century. The time period also the time of the Russian Zhars of Estonia, so much of the raillines were originally built to the 1520mm / 5ft gauge. This way trains could technically easily travel from one country to another without then excotic gauge change. The Near Past After the second World War Estonias infrastructure as a aprt of the Soviet system gradually was left behind and even downgraded while in many western countries things progressed more or less steadily, sometimes with greater leaps. The Future For the future there definitely is much to be done. Besides local infrastructure needs one of the interesting thing is the international connections, with other EU member states and with Russia. Rail Baltica, part of the EU TEN-T network promises to do what the Via Baltica did on the road side of Estonia. Since many roads are in a pretty good condition, it would be time to invest on railroad infrastructure as well.  We will later add text on Estonian level crossings, harbors, coverage of the railnetwork, needs of the industries, etc. Estonian Main Lines Harbors Served by Rail Link in Estonia Larger Industries Served by Rail  To the top of the page
 Estonian reference main page
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Created for 4rail.net by Ilkka Siissalo, Stanislav Voronin and John McKey. Pictures by Stanislav Voronin, Ilkka Siissalo and John McKey.    | |
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