ProRail will start on Friday morning with the repair work on the track at Esch in Brabant, the rail manager reports on Thursday evening. The railway manager has been granted an exemption to expel the badgers from the railway. ProRail hopes that trains will be able to run again between Boxtel and Den Bosch by the end of next week.
Due to a badger sett under the railway, no trains have been running on the route since Tuesday.
ProRail needed an exemption to restore the track, because the badger is a protected species. That exemption came on Thursday evening via the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO).
The railway manager cannot yet say with certainty whether trains will run again next week. More will become clear about this this weekend, because the excavation will show how big the badger sett is. ProRail is only allowed to work during the day, because badgers are nocturnal animals.
After the badger burrows have been excavated, the burrows are filled with sand. After this, anti-digging mesh is placed to prevent problems with badgers in the future. If badgers are found during the work, they will be anesthetized and collected.
Track surface affected
Burrowing badgers have affected the subsurface of the track, as a result of which ProRail could no longer guarantee the safety of train traffic. This also happened last week at the Frisian Molkwerum.
The repair work here seems to take weeks, much longer than in Esch. This is due to the difference in the location of the castle and the railway embankment.
The badger also has nowhere else to go in Friesland, which is why caution when removing the animals is of great importance. In Brabant, on the other hand, the animals can find a new habitat in the area themselves, so that they can be removed from the railway embankment more quickly.