Are Europe's railways ready for winter extremes?

Safety is the priority, but are we at risk of losing the year-round resilience of the railway? Ben Jones looks at how other European railways manage performance when the weather does its worst.

In this article:

• The ways in which climate change mean railways must be made more resilient to exreme weather events
• Germany's poor record, under-investment and why Deutsche Bahn service is so unreliable
• Weather forecasting, data and innovative technology solutions
• Measures to mitigate against extreme weather events

Extreme weather, it seems, has become an increasingly important factor in railway operation over the past decade.

While the climate has influenced the punctuality of public train services ever since their inception 200 years ago, even a casual observer would acknowledge that weather-related disruption is becoming noticeably more frequent.

Last winter, storms were again in the news, bringing high winds, snow, and heavy rain - closely followed by flooding - to many regions of Europe.

Flood water washes away ballast from under tracks, weakens earthworks, and inundates tunnels. High winds bring down overhead power lines and scatter mature trees across tracks, creating unacceptable risks to staff and travellers - especially at night.

Summers now bring higher average temperatures with more frequent bursts of extreme heat, often followed by sudden, violent pulses of rain, dumping billions of litres of water on rock-hard ground.

Little wonder that infrastructure managers (IMs) and train operators seek to minimise risk by reducing services or suspending them altogether when adverse conditions are predicted.

Travelling long-distance by rail in winter can often feel like a gamble. It’s not a case of ‘will my train run late’, but ‘how late will it run’ or even ‘will it run at all?’.

I made two long journeys in mainland Europe in January, with very different results.

A return trip from Warsaw to Kyiv passed without incident, despite temperatures well below freezing (-10°C), frozen rivers, and snow across Poland and Ukraine. Train operators, staff and passengers were well prepared, and the trains were busy and punctual despite the conditions.

Ukraine’s 12,200-mile rail network has proved astonishingly resilient, despite being a frequent target for Russian attacks since February 2022.

Ukrainian Railways (UZ) has suffered only one complete shutdown - for just two hours - over the last two years. Although train frequencies and speeds are low by European standards, that record provides an unflattering contrast with the UK and (increasingly) other major European railways.

A week later, an ambitious journey from Denmark back to the UK in one day was less successful, scuppered by the failure of two high-speed trains and temperature-related speed restrictions.

Deutsche Bahn’s notoriously unreliable Frankfurt-Brussels ICE route conformed to its miserable reputation, with one cancelled train and the next one arriving almost an hour late.

Elsewhere in western Germany, IC and ICE services were heavily delayed, along with many regional services. Social media reported ‘chaos’ in the Ruhr region around Essen and Cologne for much of the day, and across Belgium due to an incident in Brussels.

Both German and Belgian railways are suffering widely reported reliability and resilience issues, exacerbated by decades of under-investment in congested rail networks and many other issues familiar to UK readers.

Having been forced to stay overnight in Brussels due to the serious failure of the last Amsterdam-London Eurostar (on which passengers were stranded until 0300 awaiting a rescue locomotive), the run back to St Pancras the following morning was hampered by speed restrictions in northern France. Trains were limited for safety reasons to 200kph (125mph) rather than 300kph, after two Eurostar sets were damaged by flying blocks of ice earlier in the week.

Overall, the impression was that railways in northern and eastern Europe were better prepared for adverse weather and took it in their stride, while their colleagues further south and west struggled to cope in conditions that were (on the surface) relatively innocuous.

While many of us have a ‘gut feeling’ that the railway gives up more easily than it used to, evidence suggests that days that were once considered ‘extreme’ and ‘rare’ are now becoming more common - and could become the new normal from the second half of the 21st century.

REALITIES

Like Network Rail, Germany’s infrastructure manager DB InfraGO (formerly DB Netz) is confronting the daily realities of a changing climate. Train operator Deutsche Bahn (DB) is more exposed to its effects than any other large company in Germany, owing to its nationwide reach.

In 2018, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) outlined the scale of the problems and its guidelines for tackling them. It concluded that some extreme weather conditions are already occurring more frequently and will probably continue to increase in the coming years. This has a direct impact on the reliability and resilience of train services.

A second PIK study in 2021 led to a strategy for handling future weather extremes, with greater resilience across the German network. DB uses targeted scientific data to better protect infrastructure, vehicles, energy systems and stations against climate impacts in 34 regions with varying climates.

Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of PIK, said: “The railway is active almost everywhere in Germany - that is its great strength, but it also makes it particularly vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. No matter where local weather extremes strike, they almost always affect the railways.”

DB’s goal is to make its rail service ‘weatherproof’, so that passengers can travel unhindered, and goods can be transported reliably. The strategy includes improved vegetation management, more robust vehicles and facilities, and a weatherproof infrastructure.

In the future, sensors will record system temperatures and environmental conditions around the clock. This enables DB to identify possible disruptions caused by climate damage early and initiate repairs as quickly as possible.

A Deutsche Bahn spokesman explains: “DB uses selected forecast data that shows the weather for today and the next three days. Depending on the season, up to 14 forecast parameters are relevant - including temperature, snow depths, wind strength, amounts of precipitation.

“Since 2019, DB has had its own platform (Wetter@DB) for weather forecast data and actual data. To be able to make operational decisions in extreme weather situations, DB also uses short-term weather forecasts from the German Weather Service.

“In winter, based on weather forecasts, snow clearing and security forces (among other things) are sent to the locations at an early stage. For example, if it becomes clear two days before it snows that existing switch heating systems cannot process the amount of new snow, winter service staff help by hand.

DB is further developing its weather forecasting tool to allow better prediction of embankment fires. It is also extending forecast periods to up to eight days and installing additional interfaces to external weather portals such as federal state flood networks.

“The new weather forecast tool should be available nationwide from mid-2025. But even with the best protection, there will still be extreme weather events from which railways - like other modes of transport - are not immune.”

STORMS

Recent observations indicate that the distribution of storms has shifted from winter (November-February) to the remaining months of the year.

This brings additional problems when trees are in leaf and offer a larger surface area for storms to attack. Together with heavy rain, healthy trees on waterlogged ground can also be brought down by storms.

German studies show an increase in heavy rain, particularly in the south-east of the country. These are likely to occur more frequently in low mountain ranges, leading to more frequent floods and the erosion of railway embankments.

At the same time, temperatures are increasing, while cold and snow are decreasing. Since weather records began in 1880, the annual mean temperature in Germany has already risen by 1.4°C. The number of hot days has almost doubled on average since 1961.

Extreme heat causes equipment to overheat and fail, continuous welded rail to expand and deform, and ageing earthworks to dry out, crack and fail. All of these issues pose an increasing risk to railway safety.

White winters are becoming less common, and days with snow depths of 15cm or more are expected to decrease.

However, particularly severe cold snaps are still to be expected and possibly be even more severe - as demonstrated in early December 2023, when 40-50cm of snow fell overnight in southern Germany. Snow and ice caused huge disruption again on January 17-19, causing the cancellations of hundreds of trains and flights and traffic chaos across the southern half of the country.

DB operates a four-step strategy for managing extreme weather events. At Level 0, trained staff and repair equipment is put on standby with up to two days’ notice if storms are expected.

When the alert moves up to Level 1, DB InfraGO’s control centre in Frankfurt-am-Main calls in more staff, and a working group meets to co-ordinate weather-related measures nationwide. Regional teams meet at operations centres in the affected regions.

If the weather event has only local effects, the regional operations centre manages the effects of the storm and its consequences (Level 2).

But if two or more regions are affected the central task force in Frankfurt moves to Level 3 to co-ordinate efforts at a national level.

Based on the experiences of the past few years, DB now advises passengers in advance via various channels to postpone their journey if possible, as in the UK. DB says it communicates “comprehensively” via customer media channels and (in theory) at stations on the operational situation when train services are likely to resume.

Only in “exceptional situations” will DB completely suspend all rail traffic in individual regions. This precautionary measure is designed to protect people, vehicles, and systems. It says this approach has proven successful. The number of travellers stranded in stations was significantly lower during the most recent storms.

Like all railways, DB’s focus is on making routes usable again as quickly as possible after a storm. Hundreds of staff use special equipment to clear tracks and repair technology and overhead lines. DB also uses helicopters to obtain a quicker and more accurate picture of any damage.

MITIGATION

A successful programme of vegetation management that has been in operation since 2007 has been significantly expanded as part of efforts to reduce disruption.

Between 2018 and 2023, DB reportedly invested around €625 million (£535m) to thin out forests in a six-metre cutting zone on both sides of tracks, to reduce disruption from falling trees.

It also committed to regular checks of air-conditioning systems in more than 4,000 signal boxes, sub-stations and control units, as well as other cooling devices, with the aim of protecting the control and safety technology against extreme heat.

Heat-related disruptions fell by 20% between 2015 and 2020. Failures of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems on trains decreased significantly in the same period.

Despite all this, DB’s performance was worse than ever in 2023, falling to its lowest level for eight years.

Punctuality of long-distance trains in particular has been abysmal for a railway that was once a beacon of reliability. In November 2023, almost half of all IC and ICE trains ran late, with just 52% arriving less than six minutes behind schedule.

Exceptional snowfall of up to half a metre in Bavaria on December 2/3 led to numerous breakdowns and prompted the cancellation of hundreds of trains, with malfunctioning signalling systems and electronic information boards exacerbating the problems. In many cases, trains were trapped in depots and sidings by heavy snow and frozen points.

Both rail and road passengers were advised to cancel any unnecessary journeys amid the chaos, after Munich’s main station was closed on December 2. Massive disruption continued into the following week.

Martin Burkert, head of the EVG Railway and Transport Union, said DB was ill-equipped to deal with the weather as a result of years of under-investment.

“The DB slogan ‘we travel in all weathers’ has lost its credibility,” he told the German press last December, calling large parts of the country’s rail infrastructure “creaking and dilapidated”.

Detlef Neuß, chair of the non-profit organisation Pro Bahn, which represents public transport users in Germany, says DB was better equipped in the past to deal with harsh winter conditions.

“Instead of concentrating its attention on turning a profit, Deutsche Bahn needs to focus its attention on ensuring that the operation functions on a day-to-day basis,” he says.

It’s tempting to fall back on the generalisation that railways are better in other countries, or were better, cheaper, and more reliable in the past.

As we’ve seen, the evidence doesn’t always back that up, although the evolution of railway technology and the massive growth in mobility have had an effect on the performance of trains and control equipment over the past 40 years.

We travel further and more frequently than previous generations, both for leisure and for commuting. As a result, more of us are likely to be inconvenienced when train services are disrupted.

Equally, the advance of Health & Safety legislation, risk assessments and compensation culture has made rail companies in many countries safer but more risk-averse over the past 20-30 years.

Thanks to the continuous development of technical standards, modern passenger trains are much safer for those on board in the event of a collision or derailment. At the same time, the relentless shift from locomotives and coaches towards lighter multiple units in many countries since the 1980s has created a different risk.

While the crew of a 130-tonne locomotive would plough through drifting snow or smaller obstructions, there’s less confidence in the ability of lightweight multiple units to tackle anything above rail height.

In recent years there have been multiple incidents in which electric or diesel multiple units have been lifted off the rails by compacted snow. On a couple of occasions in Switzerland, they have been blown clean off the track by ferocious side winds.

Often cited as a paragon of what cohesive planning and sustained investment can achieve, Swiss Federal Railways’ (SBB) spends between £9m and £13.5m (CHF10-15m) annually on protecting itself from natural hazards.

Given Switzerland’s challenging Alpine topography, this figure seems relatively minor. But SBB spokesman Martin Meier notes: “Restricted operations or train cancellations on individual routes are rare, mostly caused by landslides. However, protection against natural hazards is an important issue for SBB.

“The existing protective structures, the protective forest, and a professional monitoring and alarm concept form the basis for us to continue to protect railway operations and customers. Defensive measures include protective dams, high rockfall protection nets, rock stabilisation, and natural hazard alarm systems.”

Maier adds: “It’s important to bear in mind the sometimes very different conditions - for example, with regard to the size and topography of different countries. Financing and political processes are also rarely comparable between countries.”

FRAGILE

It could be argued that many of the countries struggling to run an all-weather service are the same ones already suffering from under-investment, crumbling infrastructure, congestion, and poor reliability. Poor weather exacerbates an already fragile situation, and the safest solution is to advise passengers not to travel or (in the worst cases) to suspend services altogether.

An article about Ukrainian infrastructure, published in Issues in Science and Technology, provides a revealing insight into the difficulty of generating interest - and therefore funding - for resilience measures.

“In armed conflicts, infrastructure is both a target and a defence. The same is true amid disasters such as floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes. Between calamities, though, infrastructure rarely garners attention and is often taken for granted - as seen in society’s slow-walked responses to the challenges of climate change.

“Despite ongoing efforts to raise awareness it often takes disasters such as high-profile bridge failures to stir up popular willingness to invest in infrastructure.”

As the evidence for man-made climate change grows, perhaps it’s time to change our view of how the railway deals with extreme weather events.

Rather than criticising train operators and IMs for acting in the interests of safety, we need to accept that extreme weather events now occur with greater frequency and severity, and prioritise funding for efforts to make the railway more resilient - whatever the weather.