03:46

So… that was an interesting journey.

“Oh look, the window is wet” turned into “one side of the train is a sheet of water”, later followed by “a metal roof has lodged itself on top of the overhead catenary, tracks and one of our trains” which then became “there is no way repairs can even begin until well after midnight”.

And so my train home from Gothenburg, usually a 3-hour ride, became longer. Much, much longer. After 3½ hours stuck at a station, we ended up having to backtrack and get onto the Stockholm-Malmö mainline in order to get home. Finally arrived at three in the morning, with a whopping 6½ hour delay and a crew that had been operating for over ten hours straight.

I don’t know how much our train crews are paid, but this one deserves a raise once they have rested. Everything done by the book; constant status updates, even if nothing had really changed; water and snacks made available just when necessary, and a driver that took us through a very large diversion with no drama at all. Even a sincere “thank you” to us passengers for being kind to the crew well throughout this.

So… yeah. Could have been chaos, but luckily it wasn’t.

Article (in Swedish) with photos of the mayhem - repairs are expected to take several days before traffic can pass through there again.