Summer 2026 is also set to be full of obstacles for the Brenner railway. Extraordinary maintenance works on the infrastructure will require the partial closure of the line in two time windows, but the entire transalpine route for long-distance services, including freight trains, will be unavailable from 18 July to 1 August. From 18 July, due to maintenance works scheduled by Rfi (Italian Railway Network), access to Brenner station will not be possible. As a result, all local trains will run only to and from Gries am Brenner. While passenger services will be able to use road shuttles, for freight trains this means rescheduling all train paths.
Öbb (Austrian Federal Railways) will also use this closure window for the first phase of maintenance between Steinach and Brenner stations. In the second phase, from 23 July to 1 August, the section from Innsbruck to the Brenner Pass will also be closed for works. Owing to the scheduled works on the southern Brenner ramp, long-distance trains between Innsbruck and Bolzano will also be partially suspended from 17 July to 1 August, again with significant repercussions for freight services.
On the Austrian side, in addition to more limited track renewal works, the works will focus mainly on the rehabilitation of the Mühltal tunnel to repair damage caused by frost. At the same time, using the same closure period, maintenance will also be scheduled on the railway infrastructure between Patsch and the Brenner.
Work sites along the Brenner railway have now become an almost regular feature of the summer period, based on a timetable chosen when traffic naturally declines. Even so, this is far from cost-free for customer companies, because it inevitably means cancelling trains or using alternative routes, with higher operating costs and longer journeys. Moreover, rising traffic volumes, together with the specific features of a mountain railway such as the Brenner alpine route, are placing severe strain on infrastructure that has reached the limits of saturation, leaving no broad time windows available for maintenance.
Fortunately, investment in the future Brenner railway is taking place in both Italy and Austria, in addition to the base tunnel. Rfi has already started construction of the first two of four variants deemed priorities: the section between Fortezza and Ponte Gardena and the Trento freight bypass. Austria is also continuing work to quadruple the historic line on a new alignment starting from Innsbruck. In the recent framework infrastructure plan of Öbb (Austrian Federal Railways) for 2027-2032, approved by the Vienna Government, explicit reference is made to completing the railway access lines to the base tunnel. This was by no means a given because, despite a spending forecast of €19.5bn, compromises had to be made over the works to be carried out, but the Brenner railway has retained a reserved lane.
Piermario Curti Sacchi
