Swedish police rule out sabotage as a reason for derailment accidents

“We can already rule that out based on the information we received from the (Swedish) Accident Investigation Board,” Per-Olov Andersson of the Serious Crimes Police Department told Swedish Radio’s P4 Norrbotten.

He says it is routine for the police to launch an investigation into every serious accident.

Speculation about possible sabotage arose after two derailments earlier this winter in the run-up to the large-scale NATO exercise Nordic Response. The railway from the Norwegian port of Narvik to northern Sweden is a strategic infrastructure to reinforce Allied military equipment in the event of military conflicts.

On February 24, an empty iron ore train derailed in Vassijaure on its way back from Narvik to Kiruna.

The accident investigation center has now published its interim results.

According to the report, the 68-car train had stopped at Vassijaure station and waited for snow removal.

“The train only moved towards the stop signal to a limited extent. The weather was windy and the temperature was around zero degrees. While driving slowly through a left turn, some wheels appear to have derailed to the left. During the journey, which lasted about 1.5 kilometers, sleepers and a contact line mast were damaged. There was also damage to the switch leading to Vassijaure station,” the findings said.

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At the station, the derailed axles ended up on the platform, worsening the derailment and pushing several carriages off the tracks, causing the train to apply emergency braking.

Seven wagons derailed. Since it was the middle of winter and there had been bad weather for weeks, it took almost two weeks to repair the iron ore trains and get them back into service.

Big losses

LKAB is Europe’s largest iron ore miner and the company relies on deliveries via the Norwegian port of Narvik.

Linda Bjurholt, logistics manager at LKAB, said at the time that the mining company’s revenue losses amounted to about 100 million SEK (8.8 million euros) per day.

Normally, LKAB sends ten fully loaded trains every day to the port in Narvik for deliveries to the European market. This accounts for around two thirds of LKAB’s deliveries. The southern railway to the port of Luleå continues to run with four to five trains per day, but there is no capacity to compensate for transport via Narvik, the mining company said.