Yet another natural disaster has caused an important rail artery in Europe to shut down for over a month. The Rauma Line in Norway leading to Åndalsnes will be closed until 1 September after a landslide in Verma last week. Such events are hitting Europe and its rail network more frequently and harder than ever before, with heavy repercussions for the freight sector.
The Rauma Line is part of the longer Dovre Line, an infrastructure not new to prolonged closures due to extreme climate events. The section was closed between August 2023 and May 2024 after a bridge collapsed due to extreme weather conditions. Then, another bridge collapsed in January 2025 and caused the line to be closed until April.
In other words, over the past 23 months, the line has been open only for 12 – it will be 14 out of 25 including the next two months of closure – with a massive negative impact for rail freight. Rail freight operator Onrail uses this line to connect Åndalsnes with Oslo. Already at the beginning of 2025, Onrail’s head Henning Aandal pointed out that the very existence of the sector is constantly threatened by the frequent disruptions along the Norwegian rail infrastructure.
More frequent and more powerful events
Climate change is causing extreme weather events to occur more often and with more intensity, not only in Norway. The main rail link between Italy and France, for example, was closed for 19 months between August 2024 and April 2025 due to a landslide, and then again for one week in July due to a mudslide.
Other than landslides, the European rail freight industry has been dealing with catastrophic floodings increasing in frequency. Over the past few years, heavy rains have often hindered services, especially in southern Europe. To tackle these problems, the International Union of Railways published new recommendations for infrastructure managers in Europe on how to deal with such phenomena.