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Large bodies of water after the weekend’s heavy rains have hit the Furka steam train. Four debris flows have buried the 17 kilometer stretch between Realp in the canton of Uri and Oberwald in the canton of Valais in various places.
“Boulders, dirt and mud covered the tracks and, in some cases, the gravel bed the tracks were on was washed away,” Ulf Weidle of the Dampfbahn Furka Bergstrecke (DFB) mountain railway company tells VIEW. The sections above Gletsch and below Mutbach near Obergoms VS are particularly affected. But even between Tiefenbach UR and Realp UR, the route is no longer passable by train, Weidle said.
The route was already “wintering”
The storms came at a bad time. Because the steam train has been on winter vacation since the last weekend in September. “To do this, we closed the tunnel doors on the Furka route and dismantled the signaling blocks and switches so that they would not be damaged by snow masses in winter,” says Weidle.
Everything now has to be rebuilt to repair the route after the storms of October 2 and 3. “We have to do that before the mud freezes on the rails and on the gravel bed and causes even more damage,” Weidle says.
To this end, the DFB is now asking members of the Furka mountain trail club to volunteer for the upcoming weekend. “Each of us has around 400 members who help with construction work. Now we hope that as many of them as possible will come back and help, ”says Weidle. The mountain route will be repaired from Friday to Sunday.
Record rainfall in central and southern Switzerland
Heavy rains over the weekend led to flooding and debris flows, especially in central and southern Switzerland. New 24-hour precipitation records have been set in some places. At Bosco-Gurin TI, for example, 283 liters per square meter fell between Friday and Saturday, at Binn VS it was 259 liters and at Robièi TI 227 liters. Records were also set in Göscheneralp UR (182 liters), in Piotta TI (171 liters), Sedrun GR (145 liters) and in Disentis GR (121 liters).
On Monday morning, the weather calmed down in the south and heavy rains subsided, Meteonews wrote. But the streams and rivers continued to flood. The levels would slowly decrease in the next few hours. (fr / SDA)
