all traffic from Switzerland to Germany's main line are blocked and they have to use a secondary line with diesel power to move freight and passengers

What was the reason for the blockage?

Story goes it was tried to drill a tunnel under existing track with only 5 mtrs depth between the two levels.
Apparently this difference in depth was insufficient and the higher laying track collapsed.
Can imagine why this method was chosen,most likely not to interupt the 24/7 railtraffic from North Europe to South Europe,the result is however disastreous for ports like Rotterdam and Hamburg.
Incredible to realise that hundreds and hundreds of freighttrains have to travel a specific piece of track without any escaperoute.

It is the new German stupidity. From the three major track routes to the south and south-west of Germany (direction Switzerland) are two under construction repairs and/or only very limited usable (e.g. non electrified, under maintenance), if that.

The third and most important route (the so called “Rhein-Schiene” track routing, because it is the cargo route from the Netherlands all beside the Rhine to Switzerland and Italy. Finally this once was also a major part of the Rheingold TEE routing) is extended from 2 to 4 tracks and for high speed use. This is based on an agreement between Switzerland and the German part of the Swiss NEAT (Swiss abbreviation for “Neue Eisenbahn Alpen Transversale”, in English: “New Railway Apline Transversal”).

But Germany has already about an 8 years delay against Switzerland (like the new airport in Berlin). Because this route should have been opened when the new Gotthard tunnel is opened. And as we now, the new Gotthard is in use since December 2016. The German railway has not fulfilled its contractual promise. This brings the German DB AG and German government under a certain pressure. Because of that and the soil composition, they used a not very good experienced method of ground icing to dig a tunnel in 5 meter depth under this major track route “Rhein-Schiene”. And they failed. The ice grounding did not work. When the huge tunnel digger was right underneath the railway tracks they sank.

So the tracks are no longer usable. They sank only and did not collapse, because below the tracks is a huge tunnel digger (costs shall be about 18 Mio €) which should dig the tunnel underneath the tracks. But this machine cannot be removed either. So they even do not know yet, what to do getting the trains back on the tracks! The cargo traffic is shortly before a collapse, because the German DB AG has no emergency plan either.

The passenger trains stop at the station before the damaged 10 meter track length. People have to switch on a bus, get carried 20 km to the next train station behind the broken construction area and there they have to switch back on another train to continue their journey.

But you also should know, in Cologne 2009 a new subway tunnel under construction collapsed too, killed 2 people and destroyed the complete archive of the city of Cologne. This subway tunnel were built by the same icing method as now used in Rastatt to undermine the Rhein-Schiene. Germany in the 21st century.

Okay,so it failed,fact noted.
Dutch solution would be to stop argueing and start working!
Dig out the damaged section and remove the tunnel drilling machine,needcase using military recoverytanks.
Fill up the vault and restore the track.
Think about the lower level at a later stage.
Why should this take weeks and weeks?
Large part of West Holland was flooded in February 1953,repair of essential dykes was started from day 1,thence water was pumped out to reclaim the land again.
So,stop talking and start digging!

I think you guys are forgetting that German bureaucracy is just as efficient as German workmanship and quality and can hold up a project for weeks . And as far as I can tell from reports I'm watching, it has gotten worse since I moved to the states. I do hope that they will get repaired soon.

Robert

The problem is that a long tunnel for new high speed rail is being built under the region using a tunnel boring machine (TBM) that uses the technique to install concrete rings to stabilize the tunnel as it drills along. We just completed such a tunnel under the city of Seattle to route a major highway under downtown as the old elevated highway is past end of life.

The complication is the stabilizing solution (technique of freezing the ground to stabilize it for the short time between when the TBM drills out the space until the concrete rings can be put in place) failed due to the unexpected nature and loads on the ground above that section. Seems like an engineering study wasn't done right by the DB/contractor beforehand.

Give there is a very large TBM in the hole, one cannot just go in and support from within the hole, so the solution is to now stabilize with concrete from outside.. and that takes some time.

The odd thing is they were so confident in there not being an issue that they didn't plan for what to do if there was an issue... the ability to not route electric rail service around the problem is odd.... or they should have done a better soil evaluation at the crossing point, which they didn't do I expect.

I'm pretty sure the location of the issue is here on google maps: https://goo.gl/maps/U95edQ9fC4u

Track is now operational again.
Traffic covers 200 freighttrains per day.
Dutch companies alone estimate damage at 10 million Euro per day during the blockage.
Note the photo in the clipping is an at random picture from the archives,nothing to do with the track in question.

https://www.nu.nl/econom...e-route-zwitserland.html