VR (Finnish railway company)

Finnish: VR-Yhtymä Oy

Type	Government-owned corporation
Industry	Rail Transport
Founded	1862
Headquarters	Helsinki, Finland
Key people	Rolf Jansson, CEO
Products	Rail Transport, Rail Construction, Services
Revenue	€1,422.6 million (2010)
Net income	€43.1 million (2010)
Number of employees	12,600
Website	www.vrgroup.fi

Finnish: VR-Yhtymä Oy

The Finnish railway network in 2010.
An Sm3 class Pendolino train.
Locale	Finland
Track gauge	1,524 mm (5 ft) Russian gauge

VR or VR Group (Finnish: VR-Yhtymä Oy, Swedish: VR-Group Ab) is a state-owned railway company in Finland. Formerly known as Suomen Valtion Rautatiet (Finnish State Railways) until 1922 and Valtionrautatiet / Statsjärnvägarna (State Railways) until 1995. Its most important function is the operation of freight and passenger rail services.

Since 2010, the maintenance and the construction of the railway network have been the responsibility of the Finnish Transport Agency (Finnish: Liikennevirasto). The operation and network were originally carried out by the parent company Valtionrautatiet until 1995, when it was split into VR Group and the rail administration entity Ratahallintokeskus.

Rail transport started in Finland in 1862, and multiple main lines were built at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century in addition to smaller private railways. Valtion Rautatiet operated mainly on the bigger and longer main lines. During the twentieth century, most private railway companies were shut down and Valtionrautatiet assumed a monopoly in rail transport. In 1995 the company was privatised into VR group.

Companies in the group provide road freight and bus services, catering and real estate management, and provide data, technological, and telecommunications services for the transport and logistics sectors. The group owns a bus company, Pohjolan Liikenne, and a road freight haulage company VR Transpoint.

Altogether the group of companies includes 21 companies employing a total of about 14,400 people.

Because in most parts of Finland the density of population is low, Finland is not optimally suited for railways. Commuter services are nowadays rare outside the Helsinki area, but express trains interconnect most cities. As in France, the majority of passenger services are connections to the capital, Helsinki. VR provides car transport services. Seven stations allow loading and unloading of cars on trains: Helsinki, Turku and Tampere in the south, Oulu further north, and Rovaniemi, Kemijärvi and Kolari in Lapland. Car transport trains stop at other stations along the way for normal passenger transport. Finland is the only Nordic country to offer car transport on trains. However, car transport on trains is available on many European countries outside the Nordic countries.