No trains between Lelystad and Dronten until Sept. 15

No train traffic is possible between Lelystad and Dronten until Sept. 15 due to the consequences of a power failure that affected part of Flevoland on Friday, ProRail reports. The damage is likely to run into the millions, according to the rail manager.

There was temporarily too much power on the network, causing cables and switches to burn out. The power outage was caused by a short circuit and subsequent fire at the high-voltage substation in Lelystad on Friday afternoon, according to grid operator TenneT. In such a malfunction, the power should normally turn off in the cables automatically, but the safety system did not work. The result was that the high-voltage cables overheated, expanded and in some places hung down to the ground.

One of the high-voltage cables ended up on an overhead line of the train at Swifterbant, a village in the municipality of Dronten, resulting in a large amount of power for the electricity systems of ProRail. In addition to burned-out cables and switches, this also led to underground damage to the relay boxes. The extent of this underground damage has yet to be investigated.

"It may be that all infrastructure for the energy supply and train protection systems will have to be renewed over a distance of a few kilometers," according to ProRail. Only once all the damage has been mapped out can the railway manager say how long the repair will take.

The NS previously announced that buses will be deployed between Lelystad and Dronten until 5 a.m. on Monday morning.