Transporting Swedish iron to Germany mainly via railway?

Sweden mainly transported its iron ore to Germany from the port of Luleå, and - in the winter, when Luleå was frozen over - through Narvik over the Atlantic route. These routes both involve rather long sea voyages, as compared to the length of a voyage from somewhere around Skåne to a German port along the Baltic coast. I've tried to do a little searching, but haven't quite found a clear explanation for my question.

Why wasn't iron transported from the mines in northern Sweden to a port in the very south via railway, then shipped over a much shorter distance that was also as well-protected from Allied convoy raids as any route could have been? I'm guessing that shipping the iron from Luleå was a far lesser logistical burden, but once again, Luleå was frozen over in winter. Meanwhile, the Narvik route was eventually disrupted by the Allies and it took a full-scale invasion to keep it more or less running. But either way, just by looking at a map, at a first glance, it seems far easier to transport the iron over land to southern Sweden and transport the resources that way - especially since Sweden, being neutral, couldn't have had its trains bombed. But it seems to me that it simply wasn't done, and Germany actually staged a full-scale invasion of Norway (another major logistical burden) instead. What made this impossible, then? Was the Swedish rail network inadequate to transport the iron overland? Or were the merchant ports on Sweden's south coast not up to par? (If I understand it right, at least these ports would have been operational during winter.) Something else I'm missing? Even if this wouldn't have been the main method of trading iron to Germany, why couldn't it have been used during the winter?

For that matter, what's the situation today? I imagine Sweden still exports iron ore today (and whatever other resources/goods they produce up north), and it seems weird to me that to export these resources, they'd rely on a port that is frozen over during the winter. Has Sweden done any investments that would allow it to more easily ship its iron ore to Germany in winter today in a hypothetical reenactment of WWII?
 
I'm looking forward to some answers here too; did find that Sweden by 1940 had the coastal railway going south just couldn't understand why it wasn't used for transport of iron ore.
 
Without going into a lot of numbers, there is a higher cost with railway vs ship. The difference is large & a substantial disincentive to substitute other transport over ship or barge.
 

Driftless

Donor
Two thoughts:
  • The Germans may have thought the British would be knocked out of the war by the fall of 1940. After that inevitable victory, shipping along the Norwegian coast wouldn't be a costly problem....
  • All the ore was being put on trains for transit between the mines and either Lulea or Narvik; so they had sunk costs for loading and storage facilities on both ends of the journey. The port storage hoppers are substantial structures, so significant cost in engineering and materials to create additional facilities?
 
Iron ore is dense, and need special railcars
29164361946_cbba11bc1c_b.jpg


and need many of them

Procto131.jpg

and powerful engines to pull them
s-l1000.jpg



and then a way of loading onto the ships

DMIROreDocks_c1915_DPL.jpg

like these at Duluth.

So you need a lot of new infrastructure
 
As others have said, it would be a lot more expensive to use railways all the way to southern Sweden. Ships are much more economical. Just consider the matter of rolling stock (like marathag points out above, you need special railcars) and locomotives. The Iron Ore Railway, purpose-built for the ore transport, including the port facilities, etc, used a specific type of electric locomotives, the O series, for hauling iron ore. It was the first major part of the Swedish railway network that was electrified. In wartime conditions, it would be difficult to acquire new locomotives of this type, and not the entire Swedish railway network was electrified anyway by 1940. Starting to carry all of the iron ore all the way to Skåne would require using locomotives not ideal for it, various facilities not ideal for it on the way, and port facilities not planned for it in the Skåne end. The ore traffic would systematically disrupt the operations of the entire Swedish railway system and make transporting everything else comparatively slower and more expensive as well.
 
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TruthfulPanda

Gone Fishin'
In simple terms -
1 - ship cheap, rail expensive
2 - you have to get the ore on ships ANYWAY.
3 - the less you move the ore by rail the cheaper it is.
4 - least important - the fewer ore-hauling trains on the rail network in densely (relatively) populated Sweden the better. The network can be used to carry other things
 
There were some mines in southern Sweden which fed west coast and therefore ice free ports such as Halmstad.
 
As others have said, it would be a lot more expensive to use railways all the way to southern Sweden. Ships are much more economical. Just consider the matter of rolling stock (like marathag points out above, you need special railcars) and locomotives. The Iron Ore Railway, purpose-built for the ore transport, including the port facilities, etc, used a specific type of electric locomotives, the O series, for hauling iron ore. It was the first major part of the Swedish railway network that was electrified. In wartime conditions, it would be difficult to acquire new locomotives of this type, and not the entire Swedish railway network was electrified anyway by 1940. Starting to carry all of the iron ore all the way to Skåne would require using locomotives not ideal for it, various facilities not ideal for it on the way, and port facilities not planned for it in the Skåne end. The ore traffic would systematically disrupt the operations of the entire Swedish railway system and make transporting everything else comparatively slower and more expensive as well.

Very interesting - thank you. :)
 
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