Climate change seemed to be rail’s greatest political asset, promising investment and modal shift on an unprecedented scale. But as extreme weather increasingly disrupts operations and challenges infrastructure resilience, the climate emergency is becoming an challenge for the sector, argues Executive Editor Nick Kingsley.
For a while, it seemed that the ‘climate emergency’ might be the rail sector’s greatest asset. A socio-economic quest to drive modal shift towards low-pollution transport would unlock new levels of investment in railways, metros and tramways across the world, and finally deliver the level playing field between modes that has long been the aspiration of rail advocates.
Perhaps the apogee of this era was the cross-sector ‘Train to Copenhagen’ campaign, which culminated in environmentalists, policymakers and rail leaders joining the Climate Express from Brussels to København for the COP climate summit in December 2009.
This month, some of the same groups will board another special train, this time linking Brussels with Berlin. Organised by EU-backed R&D body Europe’s Rail to take sector stakeholders to InnoTrans, the European Train will be sure to focus minds once again on the climate crisis. But that is probably where the similarities end.
As the charter leaves Belgium on September 21, some cynics may be forgiven for wondering when it might arrive in the German capital, such has been the scale of the reliability problems affecting the DB network. But more pertinently, many passengers will surely reflect on how climate change has gone from being an advantage for rail to an almost existential threat, at least when seen through a European lens.
To say that Europe has been seared by unprecedented heat this summer is almost to underplay the scale of the crisis. Southern European summers have been getting hotter for years, but in 2026 much of the continent has baked in heatwaves that have left politicians and economists questioning how their countries can adapt to a new reality. Railways, sadly, have been on the front line, with wildfires closing whole swathes of the network in southern France, traction energy restrictions in Hungary, and two passenger trains derailing in successive days in southeast England, where the extreme weather has prompted growing concern about the stability of embankments and track substructure.
Further afield, questions are being asked after the crew of a Canadian National freight train had to be evacuated after becoming caught in a wildfire in mid-July. Such fires have become more widespread in both North America and Australia in recent years, so Europe is not facing the problem alone.
One of the most notable aspects of this summer’s heatwaves is that rail managers are no longer just dealing with problems that fall squarely within their remit. It is reasonable to argue that, for example, rail stressing techniques, overhead electrification tensioning and the performance of rolling stock air-conditioning equipment will all need to be reviewed if we accept that summers are getting significantly hotter.
What is more concerning are the external factors: in the Hungarian case, the restrictions on freight train operations were imposed because of the wider risk to the power grid from a potential shutdown of the country’s only nuclear plant. Although narrowly averted, this had been triggered by a record drop in water levels on the River Danube. Meanwhile, on the Rhein, the long-term viability of inland shipping traffic is being called into question for the same reason. If the barges can no longer navigate the river all year round, what are the implications for rail freight? In theory, positive — but only if the neighbouring rail networks are able to accommodate a rapid transfer of traffic. Current evidence would suggest this is doubtful.
In Britain, the causes of the derailments near Lewes and Wickford have not been confirmed; the Rail Accident Investigation Branch will take some time to assess the factors involved. But both incidents occurred within 24 h of the national meteorological bureau declaring August 13 to be the country’s fifth hottest day ever recorded. Network Rail’s Group Engineering & Safety Director Martin Frobisher said ‘the unprecedented hot and dry weather’ had ‘presented exceptional challenges to the railway’, while reiterating the infrastructure manager’s commitment to putting climate resilience at the heart of its investment plans.
Yet NR and its peers across Europe and beyond will already be contemplating quite how costly such weather-proofing may be. Autumn and winter storms are also becoming more intense, in line with climate scientists’ predictions. And this is putting even greater strain on legacy assets which, in most cases, were never built for such extremes between the seasons.
Any protective measures will clearly have to be paid for, and the growing need comes against a backdrop of tightening public finances. The rail sector must avoid falling into a trap of ‘what we have, we hold’, beefing up networks to protect existing operations, but making service enhancements and capacity increases unaffordable. Real focus must be applied to finding measures that can deliver greater resilience to the climate crisis while also improving operations — and ideally all at lower cost.
InnoTrans could be a good place to start: the industry’s global meeting place is being described by the organisers as ‘more international than ever before’. That is just as well, as Europe’s railways will have much to learn from their counterparts operating in places where extreme heat, storms and winter cold are more common. See you in Berlin.
This article first appeared in the September 2026 issue of Railway Gazette International
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