Greece’s second longest railway tunnel ready to operate after successful tests

The big test for the almost 4 km-long Othrys Railway Tunnel was conducted successfully on November 30. The safety exercises were carried out by ERGOSE SA in collaboration with OSE, TRAINOSE, the Fire Service, National Emergency Aid Center and the Police.

Following the success of the exercise, Othrys twin Railway Tunnels, can be now released to commercial operation as soon as Lianokladi – Domokos section is fully completed.

According to information, probably from December 15,  a section of the renovated corridor including Othrys Tunnel will be, unofficially, operate and about a month later the line will be normally launched.

At the same time, there is an ongoing race against time in order to complete the construction of the Railway Bridge 26. Latest updates suggest that superstructure works and electrification of the line have already started putting a key point of the project “on track” for the corridor’s general delivery.

The full operation of the line will allow the use of electric trains from Athens to Thessaloniki without the need to swap engines, a time consuming process, reducing time distance between the 2 cities significantly compared to the current journey which takes approximately 5 hours and 30 minutes.

Nikos Karagiannis-ypodomes.com