The weekend of 7-8 October witnessed extreme rain and flooding wreaking havoc on rail services in the northern half of Britain, effectively isolating Scotland from England. Both the East Coast and West Coast main lines...Read more
Deutsche Bahn (DB) is rebuilding the last destroyed section of the Ahrtalbahn from scratch, two years after it was destroyed. In the summer of 2021, flooding completely devastated the line between Walporzheim and Ahrbrück. The...Read more
Climate change adaptation
With multiple railways hit by flooding in the past weeks, it becomes more and more visible that extreme rainfall can have a devastating impact on railway infrastructure. What are rail infrastructure managers doing to prepare...Read more
Torrential rain in the west and south of Austria has led to flooding and mud-slides, interrupting rail traffic on several lines. Traffic has been halted in Tyrol since yesterday, says ÖBB. Long-distance traffic on the...Read more
After a storm and heavy rain caused a railway bridge on the Norwegian Dovre line to collapse last week, traffic on that route has come to a standstill. Therefore, operator SJ diverted its traffic via...Read more
The Kholodnaya River overflowed its banks last Saturday after heavy rainfall, washing away and damaging part of the Baikal-Amur railway line in Russia and making rail traffic impossible.Read more
Passengers and freight face increasing delays and disruption if Britain’s electric railways are not adapted to climate change, a new report by electrified rail experts of Furrer+Frey warns. It identified the potential threats as well...Read more
More than 350 people, 60 vehicles and 21 contractors have been deployed by Italian railway manager RFI to restore the damaged infrastructure after flooding that hit the Emilia – Romagna region this month. At the...Read more
Deutsche Bahn still cannot run 15 percent of its routes in the areas damaged by the massive July 2021 floods, the company said in a rebuilding update this week. It will take another two years...Read more
“The flooding of last year was the worst disaster we ever experienced on the Belgian railways”, said civil engineer at Infrabel Bart Kamoen at the RailTech webinar on Climate Change Adaptation. How did Infrabel deal...Read more
The damaging floods that took place last summer in northern Europe still strongly affect railway networks. In Germany, for instance, parts of the damaged network will become functional again during 2022 or even later.Read more
An increase in extreme weather over the past two years has seen several washouts on the Marches Line in the UK, causing short notice closures of up to seven days. To minimise future disruption and...Read more
Nearly four months after the heavy floods in July, part of the Ahr valley railway in Germany are reconnected to rail traffic again. It will take a lot more work for trains to return on...Read more
Subways are shut down in New York City because stations were flooded due to heavy rainfall. Some subways are stuck between stations, but the underground network writes that no one is in danger.Read more
With satellite images you can map damage to the track much faster in the event of flooding, says Auke Blokland, Earth Observation Specialist at IT company CGI. Flooding, such as the recent ones in Belgium,...Read more