Emergency monitoring on the Meråker railway

Cautus Geo quickly established monitoring in the landslide area that closed the Meråker railway - "It's all about safety," says Bane Nor.

The Meråker railway is under emergency surveillance. It happened after a landslide on Friday 7 November. The tracks were buried under rocks and soil. Two working days later, the landslide area was placed under automatic and continuous monitoring.

Stone block on the track

The site of the collapse on the Meråker railway is in the Meådalen valley in Stjørdal, on the border with Meråker. A large boulder took soil and trees with it. Stone masses lie on the damaged railway track. Passing trains were stopped at a good distance from the avalanche. No one was injured, but train traffic is closed until further notice.

Passengers on the Meråker Line, which since 1881 has linked Trondheim with the Swedish ski resort of Åre, Østersund and the Swedish railway network, are transported by bus. The railway may be closed for an extended period. The avalanche area will be secured and the line cleared and restored before trains can run through Meådalen again.

Safety first

Automatic and continuous monitoring of the avalanche area is all about safety. The mountain section close to the Meråker railway can still be unstable.

- "We take safety seriously. Automatic and continuous monitoring gives us real-time knowledge and alerts if there are movements on the mountainside," says Matias Vinje, operations engineer at Bane Nor.

Emergency call-out

- "We designed and prepared the instrumentation for automatic and continuous monitoring over the weekend, after we were contacted on Friday. On Monday we travelled up and on Tuesday everything was installed and monitoring was initiated," says CTO Lars Krangnes of Cautus Geo.

- "The system is set up with alarm limits. If something happens where the avalanche occurred or close to the area where the avalanche occurred on Friday, it triggers an alarm to Bane Nor and those who will be working on cleaning, clearing and rebuilding," says Krangnes.

Equipment for monitoring the Meråker railway:

• Total station - measures movements in the mountain section that may still be unstable
• Camera - shows and documents any movements in the mountain section
• Cautus Web - real-time analysis of total station data and alarm management and transmission
• Data logger - for e.g. power supply to total station