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The Ystadbanan is a high-traffic local railway line between the Swedish cities of Ystad and Malmö.
In order to reduce delays on this single track line, more locations were needed to enable the trains to pass. Trafikverket and Strukton Rail have built two new passing tracks to increase capacity.
The passing track in Vilhelmsborg. Photo: Ossian Olsson, through Trafikverket
One of the new passing tracks are located in Skabersjö between Oxie and Svedala; the other in Vilhelmsborg, east of Svarte. Work on the Skabersjö passing track began in late February 2017 and was completed in July. Construction in Vilhelmsborg was started at the end of May and was completed in late November.
80 Trains per day
Delays on a train often caused major consequential effects. About 80 trains per day are running on the Ystadbanan, which is a lot in comparison to many other single tracks.
“The five passing tracks already available were not enough for the increasing train traffic ”
Johan Månsson, project manager at Trafikverket
This also hindered train traffic on the connecting Österlen railway line towards Simrishamn. Only one train per hour runs from Ystad to Simrishamn; delays on the Ystadbanan have great impact on this line as well. The two extra passing tracks allows train traffic to finally run more smoothly on both lines and improves the railway connections to the South-East and West of Skåne.
Successful cooperation
The project was completed relatively fast using building process measurements. The project was well-defined in its entirety. The planning already began in autumn 2014 and was submitted for adoption in autumn 2015. The construction phase has also gone completely according to the calculations – at least in Skabersjö. Just after deployment in Vilhelmsborg there were a few signal problems that had not been detected before. The major issues were corrected already the same day.
This news item was based on a publication by Trafikverket.
“Thanks to the collaboration between an active contractor – Strukton Rail with manager Mikael Nilsson – that took the matter seriously, and Trafikverket’s own signal experts, the biggest problems were solved already on Sunday”
Ossian Olsson, project engineer at Trafikverket