Continental Line

The Continental Line (Swedish: Kontinentalbanan) is a 32-kilometre (20 mi) long railway between Malmö and Trelleborg in Sweden. At Trelleborg the railway terminates at a railway ferry quay allowing rail cars to be ferried to Rostock in Germany. A part of the railway is also part of the line between Malmö and Copenhagen via the Oresund Bridge. The first seven kilometers of the line are double track.

Continental Line
Vintage train in Trelleborg harbour (2013)
Overview
Owner	Banverket
Termini	Malmö C Trelleborg C, Trelleborg F
Service
Type	Railway
System	Swedish railways
Operator(s)	Green Cargo DB Cargo SJ Skåne commuter rail Skånetrafiken DSB DSB Øresund
History
Opened	1898
Technical
Line length	32 kilometres (20 mi)
Track length	39 kilometres (24 mi)
Number of tracks	Double or Single
Character	Freight and passenger
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in)
Electrification	15 kV  16.7 Hz AC
Route map All services north Malmö C Triangeln Hyllie Øresund Line to Copenhagen Ystad Line to Ystad Svågertorp Ingelstad Grevie Trelleborg Baltic Sea Ferry services to Rostock, Saßnitz, Świnoujście

Local passenger trains between Malmö and Trelleborg serves the railway with several stops along the route, and uses the old central station building of Trelleborg near the ferry port. The passenger service began to run again in the fall of 2015, after 40 years of non-existence.

Swedish train operator Snälltåget formerly operated a direct sleeper train service between Malmö and Berlin (previously known as Berlin Night Express), using the now defunct ferry link from Trelleborg to Sassnitz, but this service now travels to Germany overland through Denmark.

History

At first called Malmö-Kontinentens Järnväg, the railway was opened in 1898 and was initially thought of as an extension of Södra Stambanan southwards. The line replaced an old railway between Malmö and Trelleborg, the Malmö–Trelleborg Railway, which didn't have good enough standard for the traffic. The ferry traffic service started in 1909, the same year it was nationalized. It was electrified in 1933. In the 1950s the seven kilometers between Malmö and Lockarp were rebuilt to double track. In 1973 the local passenger train line between Malmö and Trelleborg were shut down, but was reactivated again in 2015.

Most of the international trains on the railway were foreign, and until the 1970s there were direct trains from Malmö to Moscow (operated by the Russian Railways), Hamburg (operated by Deutsche Bundesbahn) and Prague.

External links

• "Kontinentalbanan". Järnväg.net (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 30 November 2009.