€150m Re-Electrification Work Completed on Luxembourg Brussels Rail Connection

On Friday 26 August 2022, Luxembourg's Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Mobility and Public Works, François Bausch, participated with his Belgian federal counterpart, Georges Gilkinet, in the inauguration of the new Heinsch "25 kV" substation in Arlon, Belgium.

As part of the modernisation of axis 3 "Brussels - Luxembourg", one of the ambitious projects underway on the Belgian network, a section of this axis and more precisely, the section of line 162 "Namur-Arlon/border” located between Hatrival and the Luxembourg border will switch from 3 kV direct to 25 kV alternating.

The "Brussels-Luxembourg" line is composed on the Luxembourg side by line 50 from Luxembourg to Kleinbettingen, a line 18 km long, and by the Belgian railway axis 3 which extends from the junction of Louvain-la- Neuve to Arlon, a distance of 175 km.

The changeover to a 25,000 volt AC supply system on a 66 km section of the "Brussels - Namur - Luxembourg" line will allow greater flexibility in terms of train circulation and the use of heavier trains at a higher speed. All of the works undertaken and launched by the teams of Infrabel and its subsidiary TUC RAIL in 2010 also aim to reduce travel time between Brussels and Luxembourg by more than 20 minutes.

As a reminder, since 2018 Luxembourg has had a fully electrified 25 kV AC network following the installation of a 25 kV AC catenary on the last line which still had a 3 kV DC supply, namely the Luxembourg – Kleinbettingen line.

Minister Bausch said “It is of major importance to continue to invest in the railways so that the mobility of tomorrow is multimodal and for interoperability beyond borders. This completion of this work represents an essential step in the modernization of the 'Brussels-Luxembourg' axis."

The total budget for this re-electrification work, on the Belgian side, amounts to approximately €150 million, of which around €30 million comes from European funds.