Railways in Finland are built with a broad 1,524 mm (5 ft) track gauge, of which 3,249 km (2,019 mi) is electrified.

Passenger trains are operated by the state-owned enterprise VR that runs services on 7,225 km (4,489 mi) of track.

[citation needed] The scenery surrounding the railway lines is considered to be of outstanding natural beauty, especially in Eastern Finland with its many lakes.

[clarification needed] In addition there are also good long-distance bus and airplane connections; buses are sometimes faster and/or cheaper than trains (e.g. Helsinki–Pori).

Since the 1970s[citation needed] the Finnish Transport Agency has been discussing the possibility of building a Helsinki–Turku high-speed railway, allowing for a faster journey time between the two cities.

[6] The planned Itärata (East Rail) would link Helsinki and Kouvola via Porvoo, shortening journey times to eastern Finnish cities such as Kuopio and Joensuu.

Proposals for a rail link to Lapland in northern Finland, via Kemijärvi or Kolari, from the Norwegian port of Kirkenes are in the planning stages.

[9] However, environmental and cultural sensitivities exist which affect these plans, with concerns from the indigenous Sámi people that the proposed line would pass through reindeer grazing lands.

In Helsinki local traffic, class Sm5 EMUs are owned by Pääkaupunkiseudun Junakalusto Oy [fi], but are operated by VR.

While some private Finnish railways were electrified already at the end of the 19th century, work on the electrification of the main rail network started only in the late 1960s.

[19] Heading northwards, the electric wires reached Seinäjoki in 1975, Kokkola in 1981, Oulu in 1983, Rovaniemi in 2004, and their current northernmost point in Kemijärvi in 2014.

They are used together with ATP-VR/RHK (EBICAB 900), a train protection system usually referred to as JKV (Finnish: junien kulunvalvonta) which has to be used on rolling stock.

There are current proposed figures: Most passenger rail services in Finland radiate from Helsinki Central, serving most major cities including Tampere, Turku, Oulu, Rovaniemi, Kouvola, Kuopio, Jyväskylä and Joensuu among others.

Some towns are connected to the rail network by their own branch lines, yet are not served by passenger trains; examples include Porvoo, Uusikaupunki, Raahe and Rauma.