LAUSANNE - A fire in the early hours of Friday destroyed signalling cables near Eclepens and forced Swiss Federal Railways to close the 25-kilometre stretch between Cossonay-Penthalaz and Chavornay. Police investigators said evidence at the site points to deliberate sabotage. SBB has filed a criminal complaint against unknown persons.
The damage cuts both layers of traffic on the axis: InterCity services linking Lausanne and Geneva with Zurich and Basel, and the RER Vaud regional trains that carry commuters into the Lake Geneva conurbation. Long-distance trains were rerouted via Bern, adding up to an hour to journey times, and freight operators moved to alternative paths. SBB deployed around 20 replacement buses and 40 passenger stewards, while about 100 technicians worked to rewire the damaged control system.
Closed until early Sunday
SBB expects the line to remain shut until early Sunday, 11 October, when scheduled engineering works were already set to reduce capacity on the network. Travellers between the Lake Geneva region and the German-speaking cantons are being sent via Bern and advised to check connections before setting out. Travel insurers confirmed that tickets rebooked because of the incident fall under force-majeure provisions.
The closure landed on a working Friday, which multiplied its reach. Mobility managers at multinationals in the Lake Geneva region rerouted company shuttles and pushed visiting executives toward video calls, and cross-border commuters were told to expect crowded trains on the detour for the rest of the weekend.
Second blow to the axis in three weeks
The sabotage comes only weeks after an electrical fault stopped trains around Lausanne, Geneva and Yverdon for a night in September. Cantonal ministers from Vaud and Geneva, writing separately in Le Temps on Friday, called the vulnerability of the west-east corridor a strategic risk and urged faster federal investment in the planned Transports 45 programme to build redundancy into the network. Security services have raised surveillance around critical rail nodes.
For commuters the immediate question is simpler than the policy debate: whether the first Monday morning departures will run. SBB says that is the plan, provided the rewiring holds to its timetable. The company's longer-term reliance on ageing control systems, and the cost of replacing them, is a story we covered in our report on the Iltis rail control contract.