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Derailment cuts off trains to northern Sweden

Train service on Sweden's northern main line will be interrupted for several days after a derailment in Jämtland on Monday evening.

Derailment cuts off trains to northern Sweden

Six carriages ended up on their side. No injuries were reported, but freight traffic has been hard-hit. The cause of the accident is still unclear.

“We will have a meeting at 1pm and post new information on the site after 2pm,” Peter Behrman of the Swedish Transport Administration’s (Trafikverket) press office told The Local on Tuesday.

When asked how long the delays will be after the derailment, Behrman said, “Right now, we think several days, but we don’t know really. I hope it will be a bit clearer after 2pm.”

Work on the derailment in Jämtland was already under way on Tuesday morning. However, train service on the northern main line will be suspended for several days, with freight traffic coming to a grinding halt.

A freight train was traveling from Vännäs northeast of Umeå in northeastern Sweden to Skövde in central Sweden. It derailed at around 9.50pm on Tuesday evening in Grötinge, two stations north of Bräcke, in Jämtland.

The train was carrying paper products.

After the derailment, six cars lay on their side next to the track. The locomotive and the rear carriages remain on track, while both rail and overhead lines were damaged.

“Nearly 40 trains per day pass the site. And of those, 95 percent are freight trains,” said Denny Josefsson of the Trafikverket press office earlier on Tuesday.

It is not possible to divert the freight trains. Steel giant SSAB’s “steel commuter,” which transports steel materials from Luleå in northern Sweden on the east coast to the company’s plant in Borlänge in central Sweden, is affected by the derailment.

“We transport about 6,000 to 7,000 tonnes of steel per day to Borlänge, equal to about the same volume of steel as the Eiffel Tower. This will obviously impact us,” Stefan Enbom, site manager at SSAB in Luleå, told newspaper Norrländska Socialdemokraten (NSD) online on Tuesday.

According to Mats Hollander of Swedish rail logistics company Green Cargo’s press office, other companies, including paper products manufacturer SCA, Finnish steelmaker Outokumpu, Volvo and Ikea, also expect shipment delays.

“We are working frantically with our customer contacts now to see if we can transport the goods by other means, such as vehicle or boat, or if they can wait a few days,” said Hollander.

No passenger trains will run on Tuesday during the day on the route. Overnight, four passenger trains were affected by the derailment.

An estimated 50 to 100 passengers per train were shuttled by bus between Bräcke and Långsele west of Sollefteå in northern Sweden. It is unclear how long the delays were that they encountered.

On Tuesday night, another four passenger trains will be hit by the derailment. The trains will be replaced by bus service between Ånge south of Bräcke and Långsele.

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TRANSPORT

Copenhagen Metro lines reopen after two-week closure

Lines M3 and M4 of the Copenhagen Metro are back in service having reopened on Sunday, one day ahead of schedule.

Copenhagen Metro lines reopen after two-week closure

The two lines had been closed so that the Metro can run test operations before opening five new stations on the M4 line this summer.

The tests, which began on February 10th, are now done and the lines were running again as of Sunday evening, a day ahead of the original planned reopening on Monday February 26th.

“We are very pleased to be able to welcome our passengers on to our two lines M3 and M4,” head of operations with the Metro Søren Boysen said.

“The whole test procedure exceeded all expectations and went faster than expected and we can therefore get a head start on our reopening now,” he said.

Time set aside for potential repeat tests was not needed in the event, allowing the test closures to be completed ahead of time.

“Several of our many tests went better than expected and we have therefore not used all the time we needed for extra tests,” Boysen said.

The two lines serve around one million passengers every week, according to the Metro company.

READ ALSO: Copenhagen city government greenlights extension to Metro line

The new stops on the M4 line will be located south of central Copenhagen in the Valby and Sydhavn areas. The will have the names Haveholmen, Enghave Brygge, Sluseholmen, Mozarts Plads and København Syd (Copenhagen South).

The M3 and M4 lines, the newer sections of the Metro, opened in 2019 and 2020 respectively.

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