Finnish Railroad Organizations

Finnish railroading was for long almost isolated from the rest of the Western European rail networks. Because of the isolation, during the latest 100 years the operations on the national network were mainly a monopoly of the state owned operator VR-Yhtyma (earlier Valtionrautatiet). This organizations earlier digested numerous start ups with too thin logistics volumes for survival. During the EU membership period the railroads too have started to open for other operators and owners. The organizational structural change has also taken place. But even with several plans the old operator structures change extremely slowly, and often painfully with organizations sticking to the old models.

Picture above: A brand new Matisa rail maintenance machine owned by Destia seen in Imatra early summer of 2010. After numerous failures in grinding the dominant operator VR's market share the competition formed an international alliance, headed by another Finnish state owned organizations Destia. Destia is best known for massive road construction and maintenance operations in Finland. With the international alliance the market operation was successful, and now the company has about 15 - 35% market share of the railroad maintenance in Finland, VR still having the rest. Below the logos of the international consortium can be seen on the older Ttk1 machine.

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Organizations: Destia * Imatran Veturipalvelu (Imatra Loco Service) * Pääkaupunkiseudun Junakalusto *

/// Refurbishing continuing down from here

See also material on the older page...

Created for 4rail.net by John McKey and Andreas Ehnberg. Pictures by Stanislav Voronin, Ilkka Siissalo, Hannu Peltola, Andreas Ehnberg and John McKey.

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Also in this section:

An IC2 fo VR pulled by Swiss type Sr2 has just left Pasila, Helsinki on it's way to Turku in the west

Finnish Railroads Main Page, a great place to start browsing this section.

Junakalusto Class Sm5 on test drive meets Sm4 of VR-Yhtyma in Kerava, just outside Helsinki, Finland

Finnish railroad organizations and railroad operators have their own pages, as well as the largest operator VR-Yhtyma and a newcomer to the field Junakalusto.

While much of the passenger traffic concentrates around the capital Helsinki, you might be interested in the roster pictures of VR-Yhtyma, Junakalusto and the city of Helsinki operator HKL. HKL operates the metro and narrow gauge trams.

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Destia, Infrastructure Maintenance
	Pictures: A brand new Matisa rail maintenance machine owned by Destia seen in Imatra early summer of 2010. After numerous failures in grinding the dominant operator VR's market share the competition formed an international alliance, headed by another Finnish state owned organizations Destia. Destia is best known for massive road construction and maintenance operations in Finland. With the international alliance the market operation start was successful, and now the company has about 25 - 35% market share of the railroad maintenance in Finland, VR still having the rest. Below the logos of the international consortium can be seen on the older Ttk1 machine.

	Destia also has rolling stock for it's operations here a medium heavy diesel ex. test platform for the Finnish railroad manufacturers. Also other lighter diesels exist, but none compared with the Swedish Euro 3000 class diesel electrics of Railcare. All pictures by John Mckey.

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Imatran veturipalvelu (Imatra locomotive service), Freight operator
	Imatran veturipalvelu is a welcome newcomer to the Finnish freight railroading arena. It has a sizable fleet of mostly old VR type diesels on its use at Imatra Stora-Enso plant, which it serves. This plant is not just a factory, it is in fact several kilometers long! As of June 2012, the company will bring in its own freight from the Imatrankoski yard, the first time for decades for VR not handling freight on the national network. Now the RzD takes the wagons from Russia to Imatrankoski, then VR takes over and hauls them to Imatra freight yard and further to Stora-Enso plant. Only there has IVP so far been able to handle the "last miles". Now IVP will take the freight cars from near the border area in Imatrankoski all the way to the plant. Expect to see these yellow old but well maintained locomotives on other lines too in the future. Picture on the left by Hannu Peltola.
	Earlier absolute limits for the VR monopoly country: The IVP Dv15 is switching at the incoming switch of the Imatra freight yard on the Stora Enso plant. Now the locomotives can run freely to Imatrankoski yard about ten kilometers to the Fenno-Russian border. The trains from there carry wood chips and timber and as Russia is a big producer of raw materials for the produce hungry world. If you are wondering why, here is a simple reason for the export from Russia: According to Transparency International Finland is the 3rd less corrupted country, where Russia is the number 142 along with Nigeria and East Timor! So to get the raw materials processed it is better to take them where operating businesses is possible. More on Imatra Locomotive Service...

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Pääkaupunkiseudun Junakalusto Oy (Helsinki metropolitan are trains), Local passenger operator
	Junakalusto (PJK, JK) owns a expanding fleet of class Sm5 Flirt trains for use in helsinki Metropolitan area. The company is owned by helsinki area largest cities Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa combined 60% while the state railway operator VR-yhtymä owns the 40%. Junakalusto has ordered 41 4 module Flirt trains from Stadler Rail AG of Switzerland and these should be delivered by the end of 2014. It remains to be seen when the hoods of the newest trains to be delivered will change to European Union 2012 crash norms conforming designs. The current attractive Flirt design is not EU 2012 norm crash proof. There is a need for around 150 new EMU units around Helsinki area, so 41 trains are just the beginning of orders for the Junakalusto.

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