Continental Line

Continental Line
Vintage train in Trelleborg harbour (2013)
Overview
Type	Railway
System	Swedish railways
Termini	Malmö C Trelleborg F
Operation
Opened	1898
Owner	Banverket
Operator(s)	Green Cargo SJ Skåne commuter rail DSB
Character	Freight and passenger
Technical
Line length	32 km
Track length	39 km
Number of tracks	Double or Single
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8 ^1⁄2 in)
Electrification	15 kV 16 ^2⁄3 Hz AC

The Continental Line (Swedish: Kontinentalbanan) is a 32-kilometre (20 mi) long railway between Malmö and Trelleborg in Sweden. At Trelleborg the railway terminates at a railway ferry quay allowing rail cars to be ferried to Sassnitz in Germany. A part of the railway is also part of the line between Malmö and Copenhagen via the Oresund Bridge. The first seven kilometers of the line are double track.

The Berlin Night Express is a direct sleeper train service between Malmö and Berlin, using the ferry. There are no local passenger trains, since the line is single track and freight traffic requires all of the capacity. Buses are used for local passenger transport, which depart from 300 metres (0.19 mi) north of the ferry port. The building of the old railway station at the ferry port still stands. In winter 2015, local passenger trains between Malmö and Trelleborg begin to run again after 30 years.

History

At first called Malmö-Kontinentens Järnväg, the railway was opened in 1898 and was initially thought of as an extension of Södra Stambanan southwards. The line replaced an old railway between Malmö and Trelleborg, the Malmö–Trelleborg Railway, which didn't have good enough standard for the traffic. The ferry traffic service started in 1909, the same year it was nationalized. It was electrified in 1933. In the 1950s the seven kilometers between Malmö and Lockarp were rebuilt to double track. In 1973 the local passenger train line between Malmö and Trelleborg were shut down.

Most of the international trains on the railway were foreign, and until the 1970s there were direct trains from Malmö to Moscow (operated by the Russian Railways), Hamburg (operated by Deutsche Bundesbahn) and Prague.

External links

• Järnväg.net entry on Kontinentalbanan (Swedish)
• Banverket entry on Kontinentalbanan (Swedish)