Hasselt-Maastricht_railway
Hasselt-Maastricht railway
Railway line in Belgium
Hasselt-Maastricht railway is a railway track that goes from the Y-intersection Beverst with the Hasselt-Liège railway from Hasselt to Maastricht. The line is 17.2 km (10.7 mi) long.
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The first plans for a Hasselt - Maastricht - Aachen rail connection date back to 1849. At the beginning of 1853, an approval by royal order was given for a construction of the Belgian part of the connection. The Hasselt-Maastricht line through Beverst and Lanaken was built by the Aachen-Maastricht Railway Company (AM) which operated the Aachen-Maastricht section since 1853. In Hasselt, a connecting curve was also constructed to the railway to Landen. On 1 October 1856, the railway was put into service and the AM took over also its operation.
During the construction of the Albert Canal in 1930–1939, the originally straight line between Eigenbilzen (village in the municipality of Bilzen) and Lanaken was changed. The track was moved to go on the railway bridge in Gellik constructed over the Albert Canal in Gellik.
The section between Beverst and Maastricht was closed to passenger transport on 4 April 1954 and finally to goods transport on 24 November 1992. Between Beverst and Munsterbilzen, the tracks have been broken up except for a few remnants. Between Munsterbilzen and the bridge over the Albert Canal near Gellik the tracks are still present. On the section between Munsterbilzen and Eigenbilzen there is a railbike in operation. The rail connection between the Albert Canal by Gellik and Lanaken is broken again.
The railway line between Maastricht and Lanaken has been refurbished with a subsidy from the European Union and has been reused for freight transport. Strukton has been working on this revitalization since 2007.[1]
A special condition is that Maastricht is a natural habitat of the wall lizard and the slowworm, two very rare animal species in The Netherlands, what had to be taken into account when constructing the Dutch part in Maastricht. A monumental railway bridge over the Brusselseweg in Maastricht also has to be renovated. In July 2009, the section between Lanaken and Maastricht was completed.
On Wednesday, 8 June 2011, for the first time in years, a train ran over the railway line between Maastricht and Lanaken. The train was coming from Aachen and was going through Maastricht to Lanaken. There, on Thursday, 9 June 2011, the train was loaded with 1,200 tons of sand. On Friday, 10 June 2011, the train left with 22 cars for Romania.[2] The closure was announced in September 2016.[3]
According to the Infrabel's "Technical Network Card" edition from 1 January 2019, the section Lanaken – border is "temporarily out of order"; the section border – Maastricht "exists", everything else (west of Lanaken) doesn't exist anymore. The line is designated there as single track and not electrified.