Viseu, Portugal, Aug. 1, 2025 (Lusa) - Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP) and Comboios de Portugal (CP) announced on Friday that trains are testing the Beira Alta Line, on the Pampilhosa - Mangualde section, following technical inspections.
"Trains are running on the section between Pampilhosa station [in the municipality of Mealhada, Aveiro district] and Mangualde station [in the district of Viseu] on the Beira Alta Line. As planned, and following technical inspections and tests on the track and catenary on this line, specifically on this section, training runs for drivers began this week,” the two entities announced.
In a press release, they stated that “the training aims to familiarise CP drivers and maintenance and sales operators with the new equipment and infrastructure built under current safety procedures.”
In this regard, they indicate that “at the end of August, it will be the turn of freight operators MEDWAY and CAPTRAIN, to begin running services for the same purpose.”
“With the start of these training runs for drivers from different rail operators, we have completed another important phase in the planning for the full opening of commercial passenger and freight services on the last section of the Beira Alta Line,” they state in the document.
With this, they promise that “full opening will take place after the IMT - Institute for Mobility and Transport issues the Authorisation to Enter into Service, and they complete the EC Conformity Verification process, within the scope of the Technical Specifications for Interoperability for the Infrastructure, Energy and Train Detection subsystems”.
Minister for Infrastructure and Housing Miguel Pinto Luz, when announcing the construction of the high-speed rail link between Aveiro and Salamanca on 16 July, said that the Beira Alta line is one of the pieces of this corridor.
On that day, at a press conference in Aveiro, he recalled that the Beira Alta line had undergone modernisation works, with the certification process currently underway. He revealed that it should be operational by the end of the year.
“Next month [August], CP trains will be undergoing certification with drivers operating the line, and we therefore believe that by the end of the year, probably in October, we will have the line up and running, and that is what we are committed to,” said the minister.
This Thursday, the Civic Movement for the Beira Alta Line told the Lusa news agency that “the ongoing series of rescheduling” of the line’s reopening, initially scheduled for nine months ago and now three years late, had led many entities to write a manifesto.
We will read this document at the gathering scheduled for the day on which the Beira Alta Line (which connects the railway junction of Pampilhosa to Guarda and the border of Vilar Formoso) turns 143 years old, on Sunday, 3 October, starting at 2 p.m., in the square in front of the railway station in Nelas, in the district of Viseu.
IYN/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
