The tram to the Brno exhibition center will be canceled due to the flood protection dam

Brno – The ride of the legendary French high-speed train TGV along the Brno siding from the lower station to the exhibition grounds was possibly the last event attended by hundreds of people. The first edition of the three-day railway fair Business Rail Days might also be the last at the exhibition center. Brno is planning to build flood protection measures from 2024 to 2025, and before that, part of the siding must be removed. This decision was met with disapproval at the fair, notably by Jiří Svoboda, the General Director of the Railway Administration, and Oldřich Sládek, the Executive Director of the cargo carriers association ŽESNAD.

"It is a shortsighted decision when support for railways as such is being promoted. You can see from the attendance that there is an interest in railway vehicles and the fair. However, if you don't bring railway vehicles here, the exhibition center will lose another opportunity to do something for the public," said Sládek. Although the siding is only supposed to be removed between the lower station and the bridge over Uhelná Street, this means that transporting vehicles to the exhibition center by rail will not be possible. Individual wagons or locomotives can be transported – much more complicated and more expensively – by road, but longer trains will never see the exhibition center again. "The tracks will remain connected to the tram network, which is probably unnecessary. I will urge our association to find a solution and try to preserve the siding," Sládek said.

In its current form, the siding has been in operation since 1957, but it led to Bauer's sugar factory, which was located on the site of the exhibition center, already in the 19th century. In the last ten years, it had been used more for occasional events than for transporting railway vehicles to the exhibition event, and thus no one had seriously pursued its future. However, the current fair demonstrated that it could be more useful for the exhibition center in the future than it had been in recent years.

The spokesman for the city hall, Poňuchálek, explained why the siding should disappear by stating that a flood protection dam will be built in the area it traverses based on an already issued zoning decision. "In the coming years, a foundation for the new neighborhood Trnitá will also begin to develop, along with the related infrastructure, including the extension of Uhelná and Rosická streets, with which the siding would come into conflict," Poňuchálek said. According to the magistrate, relocation does not make sense either, because when a new main train station is built in Brno in the place of the lower station, it will be seven meters higher than the current terrain, which would make the siding connection impossible. According to this year's statement by Transport Minister Martin Kupka, construction of the new station is expected to start no earlier than 2028.