The steam train traveled again to the Salpausselkä Games - a race spectator: \”Then when the mäkimonttu starts playing, that’s something\”

We hopped along for the ride when the crowd from Helsinki once again went to the 100th anniversary competitions of Salpausselä in Lahti on Ukko-Peka.

The soundscape of a May Saturday morning at the Helsinki railway station is electric. There is a buzz. There is a rift. The people gathered on the station platform next to track seven stare at the yard.

The station’s normal sounds are covered by hissing and rhythmic humming. A mixed group of wagons of different ages pull up to the place. Finland’s oldest still-in-passenger carriage from 1898 is also on its way.

The locomotive on today’s journey is the steam locomotive Hr1 from 1948, the largest in Finnish railway history used for passenger traffic. The locomotive model is more familiarly known as Ukko-Pekka.

The destination of the trip is once again Salpausselkä’s 100-year celebration competitions in Lahti. Ukko-Pekka has been transporting competition spectators to Lahti for several years.

Steam train at the station. — Steam locomotive Hr1 is from 1948.

Powered by steam

– A little bit of soot work and then emptying the ashtray. Then raising the operating pressure, Korhonen lists the procedures performed in the morning.

Steam train conductor Kimmo Korhonen on the train. — The conductor of the train was Kimmo Korhonen.

The motive power of the locomotive is steam heated to 350 degrees by burning coal.

– Coal consumption depends on the terrain, is it downhill or uphill? But on average, 1,500–2,000 kilos of coal are shoveled into the fire pit by hand, Korhonen estimates the consumption of the train from Helsinki to Lahti.

– There are 1,591 horsepower and about 10,000 liters of water are used per hundred kilometers, he adds.

To the landscapes of childhood

– I must have been at the Salppur Games for the first time when I was five or six years old. Here, it’s always evening on Saturday and the fireworks after that, says Järvinen.

Järvinen wanted to show Salppuri to his family, who are now experiencing them for the first time. He first describes the sound in mäkimontu by imitating the growing voices of the audience, and then descriptively states:

– Then when that mäkimonttu starts playing, that’s something, he says.

Karin Niiniharju-Järvinen, Juha Järvinen, Aamos Järvinen, Auroora Järvinen at the Salpausselkä Games in Lahti.

However, the day at Salpauselkä is just beginning. What did the Järvinen family’s children think of the steam train?

Experiences on the tracks

Salppur’s racing train is operated by Suomen Elämysjunat.

– That’s when we realized that very little joy has actually been taken out of trains in Finland. We started to think that what could be invented for trains?

Robert Ramstedt of Suomen Elämysjuni in a steam train. — Robert Ramstedt told about the plans of Suomen Elämysjunie, which operates the Salppur racing train.

In addition to the Salpausselkä Games, the experience train has so far reached the Savonlinna Opera Festival, among others. Families with children have made it to the Moomin Train. According to Ramstedt, the plans include, for example, an escape room train and a royal trot train.