Cab Ride Sweden Gothenburg-Malmö

Found these wonderful cab ride videos by a Swedish train driver driving an X31 train between Sweden's Second and Third largest cities.
Time is somewhat accelerated of course.

Gothenburg-Halmstad
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnbFJJWp8JE
Halmstad-Malmö
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUlK9xQulQ0


The line used is the "Västkustbanan" West coast railroad. This railroad has been under an upgrade project to 200km/h dual track for the last 20 years but there are still sections which have not been upgraded
On the line is also the incomplete Hallandsås-tunnel one of the most epic failures of Swedish engineering history, the project started in 1993 is expected to be completed in 2015 at roughly the cost of the railroad tunnel being constructed under central Stockholm.
It has been described as Sweden's response to the Apollo moon landings by a Swedish transport minister.

Västkustbanans Wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4stkustbanan
P.S. it's rather useless.

Darkwand wrote:The line used is the "Västkustbanan" West coast railroad. This railroad has been under an upgrade project to 200km/h dual track for the last 20 years but there are still sections which have not been upgraded

I did readily see construction of several sections being upgraded, but I didn't realize it was onging for 20 years. Following the route along on Google Maps (Satellite), you realize it's fairly curvy, the sense of which you don't get from the videos.

On the line is also the incomplete Hallandsås-tunnel one of the most epic failures of Swedish engineering history, the project started in 1993 is expected to be completed in 2015 at roughly the cost of the railroad tunnel being constructed under central Stockholm.

Reading the wikion that, it looks like the Swedish cousins of the contractors on Boston's Big Dig were working on it. Shutting the project down for 8 years doesn't help contain cost, nor does using poisionous sealing materials in the tunnel.

Västkustbanans Wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4stkustbanan
P.S. it's rather useless.

The Swedish version looksto be far more complete - of course, since I don't read Swedish I can't vouch for that.

http://www.jarnvag.net/index.php/banguide/signaler
This is the best Railway site in Sweden par excellence, unfortunately it's also in Swedish, however that link goes to the signals page that shows Swedish railroad signals, i know Norway uses the same ATC system as we do but am unsure about signals.

Wikipedia article about Swedish railway signal, the article lies though as there are semaphores on inlandsbanan but they are not used as the traffic on that part of inlandsbanan is so low.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_railway_signalling

If you're ever in Sweden and want to look at signals Karlberg commuter station is exellent, it's one stop north of Stockholm Central Station and at the northern ends of the platforms you can see 3-4 signals after each other on the same track, so you can see them changing signal image one after the other


Back to Västkustbanan.
The project of getting the railroad up to double track standard has been split into different projects, the main money hole has been the Hallandsås which is also a major hindrance for freight traffic.
Current plans if followed should see the railroad being double tracked throughout.

Later this year Malmö will cease being a terminus staton and trains can go under Malmö in "The City tunnel" that connects the railroad to Denmark and the southernmost swedish rail lines.
Gothenburg also a Terminus should be welL on it's way in getting it's own tunnel by 2020 as this was a major feature of the 2010-2021 infrastructure plan by the Swedish government.