photo: Archives/Floods in Europe cause serious disruptions to rail transport
According to rail operators and major cargo owners, disruptions to the rail freight system caused by floods in Germany and Belgium will take several weeks to recover.
Floods in Europe cause serious disruptions to rail transport.
The railway corridor Mediterranean Sea - North Sea operates with great interruptions. Belgian rail infrastructure operator Infrabel has released a list of damaged lines, many of which are part of a corridor linking France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK.
Traffic is disrupted on sections of the Rhine-Alpine transport corridor, which connects the port of Rotterdam with the Italian port of Genoa. The damaged areas are mainly the lines running through Wallonia, which has been badly hit by the downpours.
Also, the Belgian province of Liege was severely affected by the flood: many sections of the track are flooded here or covered with landslides. The capacity of the alternative routes is insufficient, therefore serious disruptions and delays on routes in this direction should be expected in the near future.
Intermodal operator METRANS also said that a landslide blocked traffic on the section of the railway between Decin and Bad Schandau on the corridor linking the Czech Republic with ports in Northern Europe. The scale of the damage and the time of recovery has not been determined.
German steel company Thyssenkrupp Steel announced force majeure on July 16 due to the inability to deliver raw materials and semi-finished products between production sites and finished products to customers due to damage to the railway network. Several other European metallurgists have issued similar statements.
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