The fall of lightning right on the catenary next to the facility where the Gavà enclave is located will disrupt the normality of travelers on the Vilanova line (R2) for at least three weeks. This is the minimum time it will take to fix the signaling system that guarantees the safety of traffic between El Prat de Llobregat and Castelldefels, which was completely burnt on Monday night after the fire caused by lightning, which travelers regulars will remember for almost a month.
With the electronic interlock destroyed, all trains passing through this stretch have to do it the old fashioned way, using the telephone interlock system, which significantly reduces the number of track runs to ensure safety. Throughout the day yesterday, there were a maximum of two trains per hour in each direction on the R2 line, well below the usual six during rush hour. In the afternoon it was a little better than in the morning, when interruptions were constant and a half-hour journey could easily stretch over two hours.
The intention of the railway infrastructure administrator (Adif) and Renfe is for today to be better than yesterday and for tomorrow to be better than today. For now, this Wednesday there will be three trains per direction and time instead of the two yesterday. This is about half the usual service, with one train every twenty minutes on average. The idea is to progressively recover part of the service over the next few days and guarantee a minimum reliability within what is allowed by this type of incident, which has left the signaling system completely out of action.
The Secretary General of Infrastructures of the Ministry of Transport, Xavier Flores, traveled to the Sants station to lament the “bad luck” of the breakdown, which also damaged the auxiliary systems of the installation. “If the lightning had fallen a few meters further, we would be talking about an incident that would have been resolved in a few hours”, assured Flores, who defined the breakdown as “one of the worst incidents, since it blinds the train control and safety”. Interlocking is a fundamental element of the railway infrastructure because nowadays it has no possible substitute. If it fails, there is no alternative but to ditch the usual technology and revert to telephone confirmations between the drivers and the control center every time they move.
The most affected while the incident lasts will be the users of the R2 line and the regional ones of Tarragona and the Ebre. Lines R13, R14, R15, R16 and R17 maintain the usual service, but the journey time will be longer, as most of these trains will stop at intermediate stations, which will turn the regionals into a kind of Commuter . Others will be diverted along the Vilafranca line, an option that until now was the usual one in the event of an incident on the coast but which is now very limited due to the works on the Mediterranean corridor in Castellbisbal and the section with a single track between Molins de Rei and Cornellà for the burial works in Sant Feliu de Llobregat.
All commuter trains that run will do so in double composition, to offer the maximum possible capacity. However, the Generalitat, which owns the service, considers that the solution could be strengthened with alternative transport, such as shuttle buses, which it confirmed in a statement last night. Specifically, starting today, the bus service between Vilanova and la Geltrú, Sitges and Barcelona will be strengthened to “offer an alternative” to users after the breakdown on the R2.
The serious incident that will disrupt the Rodalies service over the next few days will expand the figure published last week by La Vanguardia, which included 525 serious incidents (with delays of more than 100 minutes) recorded during the past year, 60% more than a decade ago
The three weeks of disruption to normality, which may seem eternal for the 30,000 passengers on the R2 South line on a weekday, could be much worse. In December 2015, there was a similar incident in the Mollet enclave and the repair work took up to three months. More recently it happened between Valencia and Castellón, in both cases due to cable theft.
