Severe Flood Damage to DB Network

[LNW-GW Joint]

This is a link to an ad-filled web site which contains an PA account of the damage to the DB network in Germany from the recent floods in the western länder.
German railway: Floods caused billion-euro damage to network (msn.com)

The widespread deaths and destruction are terrible, and the railway damage is significant: 50 bridges, 180 level crossings, 1000 signal/OHLE masts and 40 signal boxes were damaged.
No doubt similar damage was caused to the adjacent networks in BE, NL and LU.
The greatest damage seems to be on mostly secondary lines in hilly areas in the Mosel and Meuse/Maas catchment areas.
Flooding then moved downstream to affect many routes around Köln.

There is a video on the front of the DB corporate web site:
Deutsche Bahn | Deutsche Bahn AG

There's also a piece in German on the flood damage, I can't find an English version.
You can use Google Translate to get it in pidgin-English.
Flutkatastrophe: Viele Bahnstrecken zerstört, Wiederaufbau wird Monate dauern | Deutsche Bahn AG

 

[DanielB]

No doubt similar damage was caused to the adjacent networks in BE, NL and LU.

The Belgian network has indeed also suffered severe damage, especially around Pepinster were several lines will be closed until the end of August. There's a map with damaged lines in Belgium in this topic.

In The Netherlands the flooding certainly caused damage, but most railways escaped severe damage. The line from Maastricht to Visé was closed for a while due to flooding near the border with Belgium, but reopened only after a few days. And although the town Valkenburg suffered severe damage (streets turned into rivers and a bridge crossing the Geul river was washed away), the railway was not affected as it is slightly higher at the hill.
Further there have only been temporary closures: Sittard - Maastricht had been closed to keep a level crossing on an evacuation route continuously open, and at Weert - Roermond the railway dike was suspected of becoming unstable due to the high water.

But damage in Germany is definitely the most severe of the affected countries. Partially related to geography probably (the badly damaged lines were in relatively narrow valleys), but also because the rain was most severe there. The German Rheinland-Palts region had over 200 mm of rain in one day, which had its devastating effects in hilly areas. Similar was what happened around the Belgian town of Pepinster.
In comparison the Dutch province of Limburg is already a bit more flat and measures taken after severe flooding in the 90's have helped a lot to prevent a significantly worse situation as water levels in the Maas were record-high in the days after. But also there was "just" 100 mm of rain in the southern Netherlands, most evacuations happened due to high water levels in rivers coming from Belgium and Germany.

 

[Beebman]

Here's a short German-language video published today on the YouTube channel of Die Welt newspaper which has footage of flood damage to the railway infrastructure:

EDIT: Similar video (in English) from Reuters:

 

[Meerkat]

Would that flooded train be savable? Even just shovelling the mud out will take a while!

 

[Alfie1014]

€1.3BN worth of damage to the DB network, wow!

 

[Beebman]

Outside of Germany, the Luzern region of Switzerland was affected yesterday by storm damage resulting in the closure of the Zugerbergbahn funicular until further notice. The following link has an embedded video near the top of the page showing the effects of the torrent of floodwater on that railway:

https://www.luzernerzeitung.ch/zent...wird-bis-auf-weiteres-nicht-fahren-ld.2166941

 

[YorkshireBear]

Not a suprise when you consider the density of the rail network round there and the scale of the flooding. I will be interested to see how long some lines stay closed especially with own article mentioning the impact on steel industry.

 

[Giugiaro]

Would that flooded train be savable? Even just shovelling the mud out will take a while!

If it's anything like the 10 Shinkansen E7 that got similarly flooded, I wouldn't get my hopes up...

 

[XAM2175]

Not a suprise when you consider the density of the rail network round there and the scale of the flooding. I will be interested to see how long some lines stay closed especially with own article mentioning the impact on steel industry.

I saw a statement by DB Netze recently indicating that they expected to have most traffic returned to normality "by the end of the year", for what that's worth.

 

[duesselmartin]

Not a suprise when you consider the density of the rail network round there and the scale of the flooding. I will be interested to see how long some lines stay closed especially with own article mentioning the impact on steel industry.

I think they will do it on a priority list. Smaller branches with no freight being last, main arteries first. Many lines have a limited service already.