The incident took place on 6 January after 1 p.m. in the town of Będzelin. The PKP Intercity train travelling from Lublin to Szczecin was stopped when the driver noticed a section of rail was missing.
The driver stopped the train and reported the missing rail. Katarzyna Michalska, spokesperson for PLK S.A., said it turned out to be a 112-centimetre-long gap.
The train remained at the scene for some time. After a temporary insert was installed, the train passed over the damaged section at a speed of about 5 km/h before continuing its journey. The delay was approximately 1.5 hours.
Track no. 2 was temporarily taken out of service due to the damage. Train traffic was redirected to the adjacent track.
The track affected by the incident has now been closed. Traffic is running on track no. 1. 'We do not expect significant delays – they may be around five minutes,' said a spokeswoman for PLK S.A.
Emergency services, including the State Fire Service and the Volunteer Fire Service, also attended the scene. After 6 p.m., the damaged rail was repaired and traffic was restored to both tracks.
Initially, there were questions about the possibility of deliberate damage to the infrastructure. However, the PLK security team did not confirm this.
The incident was not caused by outsiders. A railway commission is investigating the matter, according to representatives of the infrastructure manager.
Preliminary findings suggest that the most likely cause of the damage was extremely low temperatures. At that time, the region experienced temperature drops of up to several degrees below zero, with local temperatures reaching close to 20 degrees below zero. This type of rail damage has occurred before during severe frosts.
It is worth noting that the condition of Poland's railway infrastructure is currently mainly monitored through regular inspections and the response of services and train drivers to any irregularities they notice. However, there is no system in place that would enable the automatic real-time detection of this type of track damage. Therefore, incidents such as rail defects or cracks are only identified when noticed during operation or inspection.
This article was originally published on sektorkolejowy.pl
