Main line train service comes to halt for several hours
Damage to a train track in Turenki, south of Hämeenlinna, caused severe delays to the main line train service on Wednesday evening. Thousands of people were affected by the defect, which caused services to run late in the entire country.
The Finnish state-run rail operator VR organised replacement bus and taxi services for passengers of nine trains. For example travellers from Pieksämäki to Helsinki arrived in the capital on a bus at 3 am, instead of the scheduled train arrival time right after midnight.
The train traffic came to a halt on the electrified main line at 5.25 pm. This was caused by an electric cable, which came loose from its supports and fell on the track. The power was cut off automatically when this happened.
In the evening it was still unclear why the cable supports had failed. One of the two mainline tracks on the stretch was reopened to traffic at 7.15 in the evening. All the evening trains were severely delayed because of the fault.
The Pendolino S 91 was one of the trains to get stuck in the middle of the damaged stretch. It was meant to arrive in Tampere at 5.55 pm.
In the early evening, trains between Hämeenlinna and Riihimäki were replaced by buses. Trains ran between Helsinki and Riihimäki and again between Hämeenlinna and Tampere, but with severe delays.
Some of the evening services between Tampere and Helsinki were cancelled altogether.
VR managed to repair the damage by 5.20 on Thursday morning, but passengers have been advised to prepare for ten-minute delays to their journeys. One of the morning's Pendolino services has been replaced by a normal fast train.
This autumn, the VR services have been riddled with delays. Some of them were caused by technical faults, others by scheduled track maintenance work.
Last Monday, the linkage of two Pendolino train units failed in Tampere. On Friday of last week, a combination of two Pendolinos snapped in two in Helsinki just north of the Pasila Station. The incident took place at low speed and there was no apparent danger.
Helsingin Sanomat
