RENENS - SBB restored trains overnight on the Lausanne to Geneva line between Renens and Morges, and on the Lausanne to Yverdon-les-Bains line between Renens and Bussigny. The railway said a few delays and cancellations were still possible on Friday morning.
The stoppage began on Thursday evening with an electrical fault that made it impossible to run trains for several hours out of Renens, in canton Vaud. Long-distance and regional services were caught in the same gap: TGV, EuroCity and IC1 trains, plus IR15, IR90, IR95, RE33 and regional lines R1, R2, R3, R4, R8 and R9.
How passengers were sent around the break
Travellers between Lausanne and Neuchatel, and between Lausanne and Biel, were told to go via Bern. On the platforms the practical picture was phones, station screens and a wait. A Keystone-ATS journalist at Morges watched passengers still stranded as the evening wore on. Earlier, at Allaman, hundreds of people were left checking departure boards that had nothing useful to offer.
The fault also pushed traffic onto the road. The A1 motorway between Allaman and Preverenges was disrupted for several hours. Vaud police told Keystone-ATS around 20:15 that the road had reopened.
Renens is not a branch-line halt. It is the junction that ties Geneva, the lakeshore and the line north to Yverdon into one evening commute.
A network that has little slack
Western Switzerland's timetable assumes Renens works. When power fails there, the diversion is not a shuttle bus to the next village. It is a detour through Bern for cities that are an hour apart on a normal night. Friday's commuters got their trains back. The episode is a reminder of how much of Romandie depends on one electrical section.
SBB is already paying to keep older control software safe while a new platform is designed. That longer project is in our 6 September report on the Iltis system. Housing pressure on the same Lausanne commute is covered in the student rental piece.