Behind the scenes 16 April 2026
3 minutes

Trains at a standstill, full activity on the tracks

It wasn’t only the Easter Bunny who was active during the two-week school holidays. CFL and the subcontractors it commissioned were also hard at work, ensuring that passengers and CFL staff can continue to travel safely on the rail network.

Tracks – meaning rails, sleepers and fastenings – as well as the ballast on which they are laid, need to be renewed at regular intervals. This is due to ageing and wear, for example affecting rails and sleepers. By way of reminder: more than 1,000 trains run on Luxembourg’s rail network every single day.

Between Bettembourg and Scheuerbusch alone, almost 16 kilometres of track and around 13,000 sleepers were renewed. Thanks to the use of a track renewal train measuring over half a kilometre in length, the two-week interruption to train services was used as efficiently as possible.

Impressive: From above, the sheer scale of the train becomes apparent – weighing nearly 1,500 tonnes and stretching over 500 metres in length.
During the renewal works between Bettembourg and Scheuerbusch, sleepers made of solid tropical hardwood were used.
These wooden sleepers require no fungicides or herbicides. At just over 100 kilograms, they weigh only about a third as much as concrete sleepers.
As a result, extensive soil compaction and stabilisation work could be avoided – works that would have significantly prolonged the construction period.

Maintenance work also reached great heights on the Pulvermühle and Niedergrünewald viaducts. Here too, tracks were renewed after having carried trains safely to their destinations for more than 20 years.

The works extended from the northern exit of Luxembourg Central Station to the Pulvermühle viaduct.
Limited space: Due to the restricted space available, track renewal in this area was carried out in the traditional way – without a track renewal train.
Rails, sleepers and other heavy loads were transported to the worksites using specialised vehicles.
In addition to the familiar CFL work trains (ROBEL), vehicles capable of operating both on rail and on road were also used.

Tracks were also completely renewed over a distance of nearly two kilometres between Lorentzweiler and Lintgen. These works were likewise carried out without a track renewal train, as works to remove level crossing PN13 in Dommeldingen made access for such a specialised train impossible.

Further maintenance work took place on the line between Luxembourg and Arlon. In the Belgian–Luxembourg border region, numerous sleepers were replaced and the ballast supporting the tracks was stabilised. At the same time, switches were maintained and hedges trimmed to ensure they do not interfere with train operations in the future.

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