Fire Damages Safety Equipment, Paralyses Žilina Rail Hub

Railway traffic through the Žilina hub in northern Slovakia has been running in emergency mode since a fire on Wednesday damaged the station's safety equipment, halting freight transport and forcing replacement bus services for regional trains, according to Slovak Railways and Slovak media reports.¹³⁴⁵

Fire halts operations

A fire broke out in the safety equipment at Žilina railway station on Wednesday, making passage through the station temporarily impossible from around 10:30, according to Slovak Railways. The Fire and Rescue Corps of Slovakia responded to control the blaze, and a crisis team was convened to assess the emergency situation.⁶⁵

The malfunction left standard control and operation of switches impossible, according to Railpage.NET, and trains queued before Žilina from all directions awaiting a resumption of service. The EC 141 service from Prague to Žilina was cancelled between Čadca and Žilina without replacement, while the R 346 Žilina–Ostrava train was replaced by buses between Žilina and Čadca, according to the same source.²

Emergency mode

Freight rail transport has been temporarily halted, and regional passenger services are being replaced by buses, Slovak Railways said. Replacement bus transport was arranged on several route segments, while express trains on the Vrútky–Žilina–Dolný Hričov section are running with independent traction vehicles rather than the normal power supply, after the traction power line was switched off for safety reasons.³¹⁴⁵

Express services on the Bratislava–Žilina–Košice route are being gradually let through the station according to current possibilities, Slovak Railways said, while selected passenger trains have been partially cancelled on routes around the hub. The company said full timetables cannot be maintained until the fault is resolved and warned that delays could progressively spread to other connections.⁷⁸

Petra Lániková, spokesperson for Slovak Railways, said the company was aware of the impact on travellers. "Železnice Slovenskej republiky si plne uvedomujú, že vzniknutá situácia výrazne zasahuje do každodenného života cestujúcich," she said, adding: "Za všetky komplikácie, meškania, zmeny v doprave a obmedzenia sa cestujúcej verejnosti úprimne ospravedlňujeme."¹

Inspection and repairs pending

A detailed inspection of the fire-damaged areas is planned for Thursday morning, but engineers must first wait for the affected spaces to cool and dry sufficiently following the firefighting operation, Lániková said. "Vzhľadom na zásah Hasičského a záchranného zboru SR je potrebné počkať na dostatočné vychladnutie a vyschnutie," she said. According to ta3, the inspection is intended to assess damage to cable shafts at the station.¹⁵⁴

The scope of repairs and a timeline for restoring normal operations will be determined only after the inspection, Slovak Railways said, adding that railway safety remains the highest priority in the response. Lániková said: "Avšak vždy pri zachovaní najvyššej priority - bezpečnosti železničnej prevádzky." Railpage.NET reported that the freight disruption could last one to three days and that full restoration of operations may take several days, though this estimate has not been confirmed by other sources.¹⁴²

Background

Žilina is described by Railpage.NET as a significant hub for transit trains between Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland. The outlet reported that the hub had undergone a major modernisation completed months before the fire, and that a two-week outage for voltage maintenance work had been completed only two days beforehand. The same source said a separate safety-equipment failure had occurred between Varín and Vrútky the preceding Monday, after which trains had been running in an inter-station mode.²