PORTUGAL: Rail services have resumed on a section of the Beira Alta line in the north of the country, which provides the principal connection between the Porto – Lisboa main line and the Spanish border at Vilar Formoso.
The resumption of traffic on the 38 km section between Celorico da Beira and Guarda on November 25 marks the latest stage in a long-running programme to modernise the 202 km Pampilhosa – Guarda route.
Initially there are only two passenger trains per day over the reopened segment initially; inter-city services over the full route to Vilar Formoso are expected to resume in early 2025.
First set out in the mid-2010s in the government’s Ferrovia 2020 plan, the Beira Alta route modernisation should have been completed in the first quarter of 2020. However, the project started four years behind schedule, with infrastructure manager Infraestruturas de Portugal closing the line between Pampilhosa and Guarda in April 2022. The section from Guarda to Vilar Formoso remained open for freight.
The route modernisation is budgeted at €600m, of which 85% is being met by EU European funding. ERTMS is be installed, although this is not expected to go live until the end of 2025 at the earliest. Legacy signalling remains in use on the reopened section.
The delay to the project has seen IP pay more than €12m in compensation to national passenger operator CP and freight operators Medway and Captrain.
Increasing capacity for freight traffic is one of the key aims of the scheme. IP expects the route to be able to handle 750 m long trains rather than the previous maximum of 400 m. It anticipates that the route could be carrying up to 5 700 freight trains per annum by 2045.
