Old Tracks: Future Trail over Hallandsåsen

I've discussed trails along old tracks in two blog posts, one for a line near Malmö and one for the High Line in Manhattan. A new trail is planned for the old tracks over Hallandsåsen in the northern parts of Skåne, Sweden.

The old tracks over Hallandsås were ready 1885, as a part of the line between Helsingborg and Halmstad on the Swedish west coast. The area is very beautiful with an astonoshing view of Båstad and the bay of Laholm just before entering the railway station of Båstad.

It was aso a very difficult track for the trains for some reasons. The incline is quite high, so some cargo trains needed to accelerate before approaching the ridge in order to have a chance to cross it. At some periods, stand-by locomotives were waiting in Förslöv and Båstad to give extra support for the trains.

During fall, wet leaves made the tracks very slippery, making it even harder to pass Hallandsåsen. The railway was a single track line with very limited top speed and a meeting point in Grevie, so a very limited number of trains could pass every hour.

It became more important to resolve that bottle-neck when the traffic volumes increased between Malmö and Göteborg, and a tunnel under the ridge was built between 1991 and 2015. The project became much more expensive and complicated than forecasted.

The first leg of the trail is planned to be ready in 2018 and it will be possible to visit it by bike, foot or riding a horse. 

An article (in Swedish) about the railway history on Bjärehalvön can be found here.