Riihimäki-Tampere railway snaps on 5 weekends

Train services between Riihimäki and Tampere will be disrupted in the weekends of five consecutive weeks – from week 45 to week 49 – to carry out an initiative to replace the existing safety devices most of which have become outdated, said a Finnish Transport Agency press release.

In each of the weekends, the railway traffic disruption will continue for 24 hours from 04.00 am on Saturday, when only some long-distance passenger trains and sporadic freight trains will be allowed to use the track. The service stoppage will affect both passenger and freight transport.

“The railway safety devices have reached the end of their lifecycle and have to be renewed. The installation of the new safety devices will cause temporary inconvenience, but the positive effects will outweigh this in the long term. Thanks to the new safety devices, the traffic flow on the line section between Tampere and Riihimäki will become smoother and less vulnerable to disturbance,” said Finnish Transport Agency Project Manager Juha Lehtola.

The replacement of safety devices, however, will not affect any weekday commuter traffic.

“These replacements will be made on the busiest line section in Finland. We planned the traffic arrangements with the Finnish Transport Agency, so that the busy commuter traffic would suffer the least. Saturday is the least busy day to travel, so these service amendments will affect significantly fewer customers than they would in weekday commuter traffic. On these Saturdays, we will arrange replacement bus services,” said Juho Hannukainen, head of Transport Services Planning at the national railway operator VR Group.

The train service schedule has already been amended for the weekends of weeks 45 to 49. The service interruptions will have the greatest ramifications for the Riihimäki-Tampere section.

We will do our best to minimize the inconvenience that this will cause to train service recipients, said Finnish Transport Agency’s Railway Specialist Juha Kröger, adding that, in practice, the line can only be opened for some long-distance trains and sporadic important freight trains during the periods of disruption.