Norway
Having become somewhat addicted to Driver’s View videos on YouTube I was more than a little surprised at the major engineering required.
Norway, population – 5.3 million
The Norwegian railway system comprises 4,109 km of 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) (standard gauge) track of which 2,644 km is electrified and 274 km double track. There are 697 tunnels and 2,760 bridges.
The Norwegian Railway Directorate manages the railway network in Norway on behalf of the Ministry of Transportation. Bane NOR is a state enterprise which builds and maintains all railway tracks, while other companies operate them. These companies include Vy and subsidiaries Vy Gjøvikbanen and CargoNet, Flytoget, Go-Ahead, SJ Norge, Green Cargo, Grenland Rail and Hector Rail.
Now BC has roughly the same population but getting railway info is very hard indeed.
I would recommend everyone to watch the drivers view videos I am posting from YouTube and compare their passenger services to ours.
Well, ours is almost nonexistent.
What Norway can do, offering regional passenger services, we can do too, if there was the politcal will to do so.
The videos also challenges the the often repeated myth that one cannot operate freight and passenger services on the same line and one cannot operate a viable passenger operation on single track.
I believe the Norwegians would beg to differ.
Must see videos
Please copy and paste
BC is not interested in public railways. They say it is too expensive. This is why BC rail track was leased to CN in a long term agreement. The lease agreement prevent BC rail from restarting public rail service. CN only want the high price tourist train Rocky Mountaineer.
Part of BC rail was electric, The branch line to tumbler ridge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BC_Rail
BC rail was quite extensive. It went all the way to fort nelson and dawson creek. It was being extended to dease lake with plans to extend to Yukon and Alaska.
BC gov also refused to make repairs to Vancouver island railway and gave the land back to the first nations.
Zwei replies: you are mostly correct, but the E&N is intact, but for how long, no one knows.
As the province is a major funder for the over $11 billion to extend the Expo and Millennium Lines a mere 21.7 km, I would assume there is no money to use existing R-o-W’s, unless the federal government mandated it.
There’s two things I noticed about Norway’s railways, they don’t seem to worry about or more accurately, as much as we do when it comes to areas prone to snow and rock landslides disrupting the right of way. Probably not as much beholden to their railway insurers as well. The second thing was how much smaller Norwegian freight trains are compared to our kilometres long freight trains.
Zwei replies: The short trains are maybe due to the steep grades involved (the Flam Line has 5.5% grades) and the cheaper operation of electric trains. I understand on the Bergen Line there are several sections of 3% to 4% grades. What struck me was the tunnels.