Swedish rail infrastructure manager Trafikverket has completed the recovery activities after the major fire took place in Hässleholm, an important railway junction. For a few days, a lot of trains were cancelled, rerouted or replaced with buses. The train traffic in southern Sweden was completely restored on 24 August.

The trains were stopped due to a major fire being occurred on 14 August in the warehouse close to the tracks, near the Hässleholm railway station. The blaze has damaged the railway tracks, sleepers, signal cables and caused the cancellation of train traffic including the connections between Stockholm and Malmö, the third-largest city in Sweden. Regional transport operator Skånetrafiken replaced its commuter services with buses while Swedish national rail operator SJ rerouted its sleeper trains.

The majority of trains running via Hässleholm were relaunched only on Wednesday, 21 August. The restored service includes the Stockholm-Malmö links. At the same time, the bus replacement was still active on the Kristianstad-Tyringe and Hässleholm-Markaryd sections. The entire train traffic was restored on Saturday, 24 August.

Loss from fire

Trafikverket will calculate the damage costs after Hässleholm fire later. According to the preliminary estimations, the blaze destroyed around 500 sleepers, three catenary poles, several hundred metres of overhead lines and thousands of metres of signal cables. Actually, the rail workers have totally replaced the section of more than 100 metres long. Skånetrafiken, for its part, estimates its costs for around 10 million Swedish Kronas (circa 1 million Euros). The company spent more than half of this sum for the bus replacement services.