IN Brief:
- €32 million modernisation package launched within a wider €61.2 million Leixões line programme.
- Terminal and passing infrastructure to support freight trains up to 750 metres.
- Electrification and telecoms upgrades include five new GSM-R towers, plus grade-separation works to remove crossings.
Infraestruturas de Portugal (IP) has begun a €32 million modernisation project on the Leixões railway line, the corridor that links the national rail network to the Port of Leixões in Matosinhos, north of Porto. The works sit inside a wider €61.2 million intervention that IP says covers infrastructure, signalling, and telecommunications, alongside supervision services, design, expropriations, and the purchase of track materials.
The operational centrepiece is longer-train capability at the port interface. IP is reformulating the set of entry and exit tracks into the Leixões terminal to accommodate 750-metre trains, a length increasingly treated as a baseline for efficient rail freight in Europe. The programme also adapts reserve tracks — used for temporary stabling and train crossings — at Contumil and São Mamede de Infesta stations, with the same 750-metre usable-length requirement, an important enabler where corridor capacity is often limited by the ability to manage meets, overtakes, and path recovery.
Electrification and communications work is bundled into the project scope. IP is upgrading the catenary across the full extent of the Leixões line and is also reformulating three existing telecommunications equipment rooms, alongside building a new technical facility in Leixões. A further element is the installation of five new GSM-R telecommunications towers, strengthening the line’s railway mobile communications layer as part of a wider push for operational resilience and reliability.
Safety upgrades are a major strand of the programme, with IP setting out plans to remove four level crossings and two pedestrian crossings, replacing them with grade-separated alternatives intended to reduce conflict points between rail operations and local movements. In Maia, IP will construct a road underpass at São Gemil, providing an alternative crossing to the level crossing at kilometre 6.429 and the level crossing at the São Gemil junction, both of which are to be removed. Two pedestrian overpasses are also planned in the municipality, one at kilometre 7.315 to replace an at-grade pedestrian crossing, and another at kilometre 7.930, enabling the removal of the level crossing at that location.
In Matosinhos, the project includes improvements to the ramp and the parallel track adjacent to São Mamede de Infesta station, alongside the removal of an existing level crossing and the associated crossing area. Taken together, the works tighten the line’s safety profile while also removing operational friction that can constrain freight movements where crossings create risk controls, speed restrictions, and disruption sensitivity.
Miguel Cruz, President of Infraestruturas de Portugal, said the intervention was “a fundamental investment to strengthen the capacity and efficiency of the national rail network, helping to consolidate the Port of Leixões — the country’s second-largest — as a strategic logistics axis for the competitiveness and export capacity of Portuguese companies.”
The programme aims to deliver a more reliable port-rail interface, longer freight train operations without bespoke routing compromises, and upgraded electrification and communications infrastructure that is less prone to single-point failures. The broader €61.2 million package also signals that IP is treating the corridor as more than a local spur, aligning it with national rail performance objectives while reinforcing the port’s role in inland freight flows.
