The repair of the Malmbanan railway is delayed

The first forecast said that traffic would be up and running by the end of January. This was postponed to February 8 and now it has been further postponed. The Swedish Transport Administration does not dare to set a new date. They are hoping for sometime next week.

The reason for the delay in the work after the train derailment at Vassijaure is that there have been large amounts of snow and periods of very low temperatures.

"We will not compromise on safety and we must have an approved railway facility when we release traffic. The last parts of the restoration work have been complicated by the fact that a lot of time has been spent on clearing after the latest snowstorm", says Simon Sunna, section manager for railways at the Swedish Transport Administration.

For the mining company LKAB, which transports ore between the mine in Kiruna and the ore port in Narvik, the traffic stop means a loss of revenue of SEK 100 million per day. In total, this amounts to around SEK 4 billion since the train derailment on December 17.

Lennart Håkansson

editor@northswedenbusiness.com