Continental Line

Continental Line

Vintage train in Trelleborg harbour (2013)
Overview
Type Railway
System Swedish railways
Termini Malmö C
Trelleborg 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.

Local passenger trains between Malmö and Trelleborg serves the railway with several stops along the route, and uses the old central station building of Trelleborg near the ferry port. The passenger service began to run again in the fall of 2015, after 40 years of non-existence. Transport company Veolia operates a direct sleeper train service between Malmö and Berlin (formerly known as Berlin Night Express), using the ferry.

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.

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