Night crews race to rebuild Monte-Carlo tunnel rail line
By Zak Jackson, MonacoViews Editorial
SNCF Réseau teams are working through the night to repair 1,000 metres of damaged track between Monaco and Roquebrune after a rare incident.
Every night for the past three weeks, between the last train and the first, around sixty SNCF Réseau workers have been inside the Monte-Carlo tunnel rebuilding a stretch of track damaged by what the operator describes as an extremely rare incident. The affected section runs roughly 1,000 metres between Monaco and Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, on one of the busiest commuter corridors on the French Riviera.
What would normally be scheduled as a three-year renewal project has been compressed into three months, with crews working against the clock each night before services resume at dawn. The tight window means heavy machinery, ballast and rail sections have to be moved in and out of the tunnel in a matter of hours, then cleared before the morning timetable starts.
For residents who rely on the Monaco to Nice and Monaco to Vintimille lines for daily commuting, the repairs have so far caused no daytime disruption, though the scale of the nightly operation underlines how much work is going into keeping the line safe. With Monaco's rail link central to cross-border commuting and property access along the coast, the coming weeks will show whether the accelerated timetable holds before the tunnel returns to full normal maintenance cycles.