Slovakia is modernizing the railway infrastructure on the border with Ukraine

Slovakia announced its intention to modernize the railway infrastructure near the border stations from Ukraine. This was stated by a representative of ZSSK Cargo Joseph Virba during a meeting of Ukrainian Railways (UZ) and Slovak carriers, reports Rail.Insider.

This week, the Slovak railway workers are planning to start modernizing the marshalling yard along the 1520 mm track of the Cierna station above Tisou. Work will be carried out during the day, and transportation will be carried out at night.

At the same time, according to Josef Virba, ZSSK Cargo has more than 1,000 empty railcars at the Cierna nad Tisou station. The carrier asked to provide UZ locomotives as a reserve for the removal of this rolling stock, because the appropriate equipment will be used to modernize the marshalling yard, which will require four free tracks. The work will last until May 30, 2023.

In addition, in June it is planned to repair the tracks and the contact network at the sections of the State Border with Ukraine – Matevtsy and Matevtsy – Ganyska near Kosice.

As GMK Center reported earlier, Ukrainian Railways transported to Slovakia in March 2023 over 1 million tons of iron ore. 570 thousand tons of iron ore were shipped to the Slovak steel plant US Steel Kosice, more than 490 thousand tons – to Czech and Austrian recipients. In total, during March 2023, UZ transported 1.74 million tons of iron and manganese ores for export, increasing the volume of transportation by 32.2% compared to February.

In April 2023, Ukrainian Railways reduced export shipments of iron ore by 4% compared to the previous month – to 1.665 million tons. The share of iron ore in the structure of export transportation of the railway operator for the month amounted to 34% compared to 32.1% a month earlier. Transportation of ferrous metals abroad in April 2023 amounted to 414 thousand tons (+16% m/m), or 8% of the total export traffic for this period.