Grain trains in Naantali 28.7.2020

City of Naantali is located in South-Western Finland, at the end of short, unelectrified Raisio-Naantali -branch line. Naantali is part of Turku metropolitan area. Naantali had regular freight traffic until 2015 and then briefly in 2017, after which branch was without traffic until 2020, when grain trains from Russia to grain silos in port of Naantali began running again. I visited Naantali 28.7.2020 to see first grain trains. Because tracks in Naantali yard are quite sort and number of wagons fitting in tracks of Viljava (finnish government-owned grain company) is limited, long grain trains were first driven to nearest bigger freight yard in Turku and delivered from there to Naantali in smaller batches, using Dv12-diesel locomotive. Viljava has it's own Otso 2R -locomotive to shunt wagons around silos. The first day of traffic didn't however go smoothly, as after being disused for more than 3 years, rusty tracks caused some amount of problems. This ressurrection was unfortunately shortlived. Russian invasion of Ukraine in february 2022 caused collapse of railway traffic over Finland-Russia-border and spelled doom for russian grain trains in Finland. Last grain trains to Naantali had been driven in fall 2021 and traffic didn't continue in 2022 and as such, line has now been disused for nearly 5 years. There is still hope for the line: Rebuilding and electrifying the line recently finished it's design phase and is targeted for completion before 2031 and it is hoped, that passenger services in the line could resume in 2031, having been absent since 1990. Trains would run hourly, making the service better than anything Naantali -branch has ever had. Unfortunately resumption of the freight traffic on Naantali branch is no on sight. Port of Naantali is still there as well as some other potential customers, but there hasn't been any news lately. ___________________________________ Outro picture: Dr45 diesel locomotive in Karhula, South-Eastern Finland Music: TheFatRat - Unity Watch the official music video: https://tinyurl.com/unitytfr Listen to Unity: https://thefatrat.ffm.to/unity Follow TheFatRat: https://ffm.bio/thefatrat ___________________________________ TrainFanFinland - Traffic videos from Finland