Yesterday evening the local public French radio/tv station reported that the train line between Lyon and Turin (more specifically, right at St Jean de Maurienne on the French side, not far from the Italian border) is finally slated to re-open in March 2025. (this is obviously also the train line that goes between Paris and Milan.)
The train line has been closed since August 2023 when a massive rock slide damaged the tunnel that runs alongside the mountain at that point. They first said it would be a few weeks before it re-opened, then a few months. The job ended up being much bigger and so now it will be more than a year and a half since the incident that service will finally be reinstated.
They have spent €13 million euros making repairs - clearing away the rock that fell, making other rock fall, securing the new rock face to the internal part of the mountain. 23 technicians on ropes have worked seven days a week (along with the other workers) to accomplish the needed repairs and reinforcements. 15,000 cubic meters of rock was dislodged in the initial rock slide ; 5,000 cubic meters came down in the days after; and workers dislodged another 10,000 cubic meters of rock during this 19-month project. If you do the math, that is 30,000 cubic meters of rock that has either dislodged itself or been dislodged and had to be carted away.
Prior to the rock slide, SNCF ran I don't know how many trains a day on the Paris-Lyon-Turin-Milan route, and Trenitalia ran three a day. Some time after the rock slide, SNCF started providing one service a day - which meant taking the train from Paris to Modane or somewhere, waiting and getting on a bus to do the part that was affected by the rockslide, then getting back on a train on the Italian side of the border at Bardonecchia and taking the train the rest of the way to Turin and/or Milan. This obviously lengthened the time necessary for the trip - not to mention making it tougher to plan because there was only one running a day in each direction. For us, a trip to Turin took 7 hours instead of the 5 hours and 40 minutes it normally takes. We will be so glad to have this line back up and running normally!!
For some photos of the site and the work, you can check out the France Bleu Pays de Savoie article here:
https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/transports/eboulement-en-maurienne-la-reouverture-de-la-ligne-sncf-annoncee-pour-mars-2025-13-millions-d-euros-de-travaux-5809020