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  "description": "At the time of writing, my #CrossBorderRail project has taken me to 419 international railway lines since 13 June 2022.\n\nOne of the very first borders I went to - on 19 June 2022 - was Haparanda 🇸🇪 - Tornio 🇫🇮 (OpenRailwayMap) at the very northern end of the Baltic Sea.\n\nLittle did I know that now, four years on, we still do not know when passenger trains will finally cross this border bridge.\n\nFor here, like in dozens of other places I have been to in this massive project, solving even the ",
  "path": "/cross-border-railway-problems-are-annoyingly-universal/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-18T09:45:54.000Z",
  "site": "https://jonworth.eu",
  "tags": [
    "CrossBorderRail project",
    "OpenRailwayMap",
    "started in 2020",
    "started in late 2022",
    "everything was ready",
    "Finland's minister of transport, said services would start \"this summer\"",
    "the longest train journey in the EU",
    "journalist at Yle who wrote about it"
  ],
  "textContent": "At the time of writing, my #CrossBorderRail project has taken me to 419 international railway lines since 13 June 2022.\n\nOne of the very first borders I went to - on 19 June 2022 - was Haparanda 🇸🇪 - Tornio 🇫🇮 (OpenRailwayMap) at the very northern end of the Baltic Sea.\n\nThe border bridge at Haparanda - Tornio, photographed from the Swedish side\n\nLittle did I know that now, four years on, we _still_ do not know when passenger trains will finally cross this border bridge.\n\nFor here, like in dozens of other places I have been to in this massive project, solving even the simplest cross-border railway problems turns into a drawn out saga.\n\nIn 2022 the station at Haparanda, Swedish side, had already been renovated and the standard gauge track from Boden electrified. But nothing had yet happened to the broad gauge tracks from Tornio in Finland:\n\nNo works done to broad gauge tracks at Haparanda in 2022\n\nA quick recap as to what has, and hasn't, happened.\n\nPlanning to electrify the cross border section and run passenger trains from Kemi to Haparanda started in 2020.\n\nRenovation works on the cross-border bridge, and electrification works, started in late 2022 (shortly after I visited) and were done by early 2025.\n\nIn summer 2025, everything was ready... and nothing happened.\n\nAnd then a month ago, in April 2026, Finland's minister of transport, said services would start \"this summer\"... and so far nothing has happened, no start date confirmed.\n\n**Yes, there is a track ready for passenger trains that has been standing there for over a year now, and there are still no passenger trains**.\n\nNow this one is getting especially annoying, personally.\n\nI need to give a speech at an event outside Helsinki on 26th July - just two months from now - and is there going to be a new railway to take?\n\nAnd as, for the hell of it, I have worked out the longest train journey in the EU. That uses the Tornio - Haparanda connection. But who knows when it might finally be possible?\n\nNo-one can tell me.\n\nThe journalist at Yle who wrote about it doesn't know. People I have enquired with inside VR do not know. Nothing has been agreed yet is all I get.\n\nIs anything even being prepared, or not?\n\nIs there any chance this is going to happen this summer, or not?\n\nWas the Minister just talking without any knowledge when she said it would open?\n\nNo responsibility, no accountability, no decision making ability.\n\nAnd while Haparanda - Tornio is on my mind right now, these sorts of problems repeat all over the place. From Tornio to Valença do Minho 🇵🇹 to Bitola 🇲🇰 to Tantow 🇩🇪, the same issues.\n\nFor the moment the only certainty: there is at least a night train every night to Helsinki from the mosquito infested Tornio-Itäinen, an inadequate tiny halt for these border towns that deserve something better:\n\nStation sign at Tornio-Itäinen",
  "title": "Cross-border railway problems are annoyingly universal",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-18T11:45:55.201Z"
}