News / Fear of new landslide keeps vital Alpine rail freight link closed

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Rail freight traffic between France and Italy via Modane remains at a standstill after the major landslide in the Maurienne Valley several weeks ago, and no resumption is expected before the end of next month.

An estimated 10,000 tonnes of rock fell from mountainsides overlooking the Maurienne Valley in France’s Savoie region at the end of August, burying a local road and impacting one of the bridges on the A43 motorway leading to the Fréjus road tunnel and a nearby railway line and tunnel.

While road traffic resumed on 8 September, work on repairing the damage done to the rail infrastructure will not begin until 3,000 to 4,000 cubic metres of unstable rock that still threatens to detach from the mountain have been removed, said SNCF.

This will be a delicate operation, since it will be necessary to avoid overloading the rail tunnel which is already bearing the weight of rubble from the first landslide.

According to initial assessments by SNCF, only part of the tunnel entrance was swept away by the landslide, a catenary arch was destroyed and around 30 metres of track damaged.

However, there continues to be a risk of part of the tunnel collapsing and, for that reason, it is under close surveillance, with sensors installed to monitor the slightest movement.

SNCF said it would try to provide more precise information at the end of this week on the progress of the work and a possible line reopening date.

“There is no prospect of a resumption at this stage, and we are dependent on geological analyses and the repair operations that need to be carried out by the infrastructure manager,” a spokesperson for Rail Logistics Europe, which groups all of SNCF’s rail freight subsidiaries, told The Loadstar.

With the line cut off, contingency plans focus on alternative rail routes from France to Italy, via Switzerland or Nice. In some case, shippers have no alternative but to transfer shipments to road.

One service directly impacted is the Autoroute Ferroviaire Alpine (AFA) between Aiton, near Chambéry in France, and Orbassano, near Turin in Italy, operated by SNCF rail freight subsidiary Viia using Fret SNCF trains.

Before the rockfall, there were three round-trips a day for accompanied and unaccompanied semi-trailers and tankers and the AFA also offered connections to Calais, with possible on-forwarding to the UK.

French logistics firm Geodis normally uses the AFA and, following the rockfall, set up a road transport solution for its customers, a spokesperson told The Loadstar.

Geodis continues to operate its combined road-rail service between Paris/Noisy-le-Sec and Novara, in north-west Italy, -routed via Switzerland, with four round trips a week.