The crumbling foundations of the Greek railway system
Track ballast, the special-purpose gravel placed beneath railroad tracks, is like the foundations of a building. If it’s unsound, then the entire structure is compromised. After months of investigation, Reporters United found evidence that the Greek railways’ foundations are disintegrating – quite literally. The authorities responsible for the tracks remain silent.
When a supposedly brand new, “state-of-the-art” highway is riddled with potholes, it means it was either poorly constructed in the first place, poorly maintained – or both. Such a road is inevitably going to be used by very few cars, which will be frequently forced to slow down.
This is the picture that the Greek railway system presents today. Very few trains are operating. There are just two per day running from Athens, the capital, to Thessaloniki in the north, the country’s second largest city. Compare this with other European countries: Berlin-Munich (24 trains per day), Paris-Lyon (29 trains per day), Madrid-Barcelona (48 trains per day), and Rome-Milan (a staggering 85 trains per day). Or compare it with its own past: in 1989 there were 11 trains running daily between Athens and Thessaloniki; in 1994 there were 10; in 2011, there were 7. And even the two trains that run today are forced to slow down frequently in order to pass over the difficult sections.
During the last two and a half years, the conversation as to why this is the case has revolved around the railway’s electronic safety systems (namely, the signalling system). But there is an equally serious, fundamental problem which has been glossed over by those in charge of the railway, never mentioned by the state.
During the last...That is, since the Tempi train crash, a head-on collision between a passenger and freight train on February 28, 2023 that killed 57. It´s the most serious railway accident in Greek history and has been seen as a failure of the present and past governments who aggressively pushed for the privatisation of the railways. An ongoing trial opened in March 2026 and was immediately postponed because of shouts of ¨shame on you¨from families of the victims.
According to government spokespeople, the only thing that is needed is for some works to be completed (installing the signalling and remote traffic control systems, repairing the flood damage) and for Hellenic Train (the company that runs the railway) to bring into service newer and faster trains. (The “fast” trains that the Italian company bought in 2022, the much-touted “White Arrows” and “Silver Arrows”, proved to be junk, as Reporters United reported at the time.)
Hellenic Train To avoid confusion, Hellenic Train (which started out as TRAINOSE S.A.), a former subsidiary of OSE, is not the same as OSE (the Hellenic Railway Organisation), but a company that manages the Greek railway network, and is owned by an Italian consortium, Ferrovie Dello Stato Italiane Group, which bought it in 2017. Tellingly, the company has no name in Greek anymore.
Silver arrows Lefka Veli and Asimenia Veli, respectively. [Λευκά Βέλη/Ασημένια Βέλη]
But – “when the works are completed, then the railway will be laid bare,” claims Nikos Tsikalakis, a trade unionist in OSE (the Hellenic Railways Organisation). He means that only then will the true condition of the tracks be exposed. Supposedly, the tracks have already been modernised in order to withstand the increased forces they are subjected to when trains travel over them at 200 kilometres per hour. According to Mr. Tsikalakis, the main problem is lack of maintenance.
But is that all? Reporters United are in possession of the testimony of a person with hands-on experience of the construction materials used on the track going back thirty years. This person claims that the railway is ailing at its very foundations, because Greece has no quarries that can supply materials hard and homogeneous enough to provide the ballast which supports the tracks in a cost-effective manner. If the claim holds true, Greek trains will never be able to run at 200 kilometres per hour.
In the course of our research, and while trying to confirm or disprove these allegations, we found the following. First, an abundance of testimonies, indications, and evidence show that the railway lines – meaning the tracks themselves, not only the electronic systems – are defective. Second, we found a consignment of track ballast which crumbled in one’s hands, though supposed to be exceptionally hard. We did not find evidence which directly correlates the quality of track ballast with track failure. In order to ascertain such a link would require long-term specialised studies.
During our investigation, we were surprised by the stance of the Greek authorities, in this case the Ministry of Transportation, OSE, and ERGOSE. These entities could have easily put an end to our questions by revealing the provenance of the gravel for the track ballast, but on each attempt they failed to do so.
ERGOSE used to be OSE’s state-owned public works construction company, focused on the maintenance, modernisation, and expansion of the Greek railway network. Following the global turn away from state-owned companies to rampant privatisation, ERGOSE was merged into OSE.
What we do know is this. One of the standard principles of railway safety is that trains must slow down when running on difficult sections of track. Also, the greater the number of trains travelling along a problematic section of track, the greater the risk of the track collapsing. Even though the tracks in Greece are less utilised than in countries with functioning railway systems, Greece has the third highest number of train derailments in Europe. It holds first place in Europe for serious injuries from derailment, and second place for deaths by the same cause. At the same time, it holds second place for events caused by broken rails which are caught before an accident is caused (accident precursors), and is in third place for those caused by warped rails.
Broken and warped rails are by definition problems of the track itself. Derailments are sometimes caused by a fault in the tracks, and sometimes by a fault in the trains’ wheels or axles, or by a combination of the two. Just as a highway develops potholes when the subgrade is unsound, in the railway network the line gets destabilised when it rests on gravel that is crumbling, either because it was unsuitable to begin with, or because it underwent normal wear and tear but wasn’t maintained properly.
In 2014, members of an ERGOSE construction crew discovered that the gravel procured for a section of the new Athens-Thessaloniki line was crumbling in their hands. Our source maintains that the material procured consisted of 90% common limestone and 10% dolomite, which is also a type of limestone, though somewhat harder. This discovery, revealed to the public through this article for the first time, was brought to our attention by a source inside the former ERGOSE. Another source, who worked at OSE, spoke of a “crime” in the procurement of track ballast.
In order to determine if any of these allegations are true, we contacted the relevant authorities with what might be considered a simple question: what was the provenance of the track ballast used in the Greek railways over the past thirty years?
The track manager and deputy CEO of OSE, Evaggelos Christogiannis refused to answer any of our questions concerning the condition of the tracks and referred us to Christos Palios, CEO of OSE. Our repeated written queries and document requests (in January, March, and May of 2025) also went unanswered. The Ministry of Transportation, OSE, and ERGOSE, not only refused to give any detailed information about the procurement of construction materials for the railway, but would not give us even a standard assurance that everything is in order.
A little history
Track ballast has long been considered the weakest link of the Greek railway system as far back as the 1990s. In a ten-year study, Kostas Giannakos, an engineer and former head of OSE, found that the crumbling subgrade caused railway sleepers (the concrete ties which keep the rails exactly 1 metre and 435 millimetres apart) to crack, and forced trains to slow down.
There was a specific and perfectly reasonable cause: the subsurface rock in Greece is mainly limestone, which means it has been formed from the sediment at the bottom of primordial seas, resulting in soft stone. “Until the end of the study period, the track ballast in the Greek railway was made up exclusively of limestone gravel,” Mr. Giannakos wrote in a paper published in 2009. “Non-limestone gravel would have to be imported from abroad or transported from distant regions, both solutions being prohibitively expensive.”
Mr Giannakos... ‘Design Loads on Railway Substructure: Sensitivity Analysis of the Influence of the Fastening Stiffness’ in the International Journal of Railway Research.
Abroad or transported... Linguistically-minded visitors to Greece might have seen the word ΜΕΤΑΦΟΡΕΣ on the side of cargo trains or lorries. Μεταφορές means transport/logistics but also, as is known the world over, metaphor. The original meaning of μεταφορά in Ancient Greek was the transfer of a characteristic of a word to a different word. Interestingly, the word translation also comes from the Latin to carry across, to move from place to place. In ecclesiastical language priests being moved from parish to parish are referred to as being “translated”.
The fact that a modernised railway system needed stronger foundations was implicitly acknowledged by OSE in adopting French engineering standards during the 1990s and the similar EU technical specification E.18.07.10 in 2007.
But did Greece actually make that leap? Or did the modernisation of the railway network construction materials remain in limbo, in the same way that the modernisation of the signalling and safety systems remain in limbo?
With no answers provided to us, we can only turn to the bitter lived reality to glimpse the truth of the situation.
We asked the relevant regulatory agency, the Hellenic Survey of Geology and Mineral Exploration, if they have evaluated any quarries in the country as suitable for the mining of track ballast gravel and if so, which ones. (This body is legally required to give permission for all new quarries, under law 4512/2018, article 52 par. 2.) We did not receive an answer. Meanwhile, the regulatory body responsible for certifying whether the railway system in fact underwent the costly transition to suitable stone declined to provide clarification.
We also asked OSE, ERGOSE, and the Ministry of Transportation to provide us with evidence to show that the gravel used under the railway tracks for the past thirty years can indeed support a modern and safe railway network. Not a network which “will reach the level of Italy’s railway network” where trains reach speeds of 300 kilometres per hour, as once promised by the Greek PM, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, but at least the level of network stipulated by the standards in effect since the 1990s, meaning a top speed of 200-250 kilometres per hour.
OSE, the former ERGOSE, and the Ministry of Transportation did not respond to our requests. With no answers provided to us, we can only turn to the bitter lived reality to glimpse the truth of the situation. Speeds of 200 kilometres per hour are nowhere to be seen, and we have reached the point where there are only two trains per day connecting Athens and Thessaloniki.
Following three decades of so-called “modernisation”, the few Greek trains that are actually running barely reach speeds of 160 kilometres per hour, while on dozens of sections they are forced to reduce speed to 80, 40, or even a meagre 6 kilometres per hour. The order issued to engine drivers to reduce speed at certain sections has nothing to do with a lack of remote traffic control, ETCS, GSM-R, and other advanced systems. The cause for these reduced speeds, as we read in the instruction document issued to engine drivers in April 2025 is something much more fundamental: “the condition of the track.”
All of the above refers to what is taking place on the country’s main railway line. On the Northern Greece line, the situation is even more dire, as shown in a recent report by major news outlet News24/7. Tens of thousands of new concrete sleepers, which were supposed to last for decades, are cracking all across the network, as acknowledged by Panagiotis Terezakis, former CEO of OSE, in January 2024 to Reporters United. Some of the sleepers were defective on purchase, cracking before they were even placed on the track.
Despite our own repeated queries, OSE and ERGOSE have never addressed publicly the causes of the cracks. “Concrete sleepers in Europe are designed to resist massive loads,” we were informed by a foreign specialist who wishes to remain anonymous so as not to get involved in the internal discussion of the matter in Greece. “If you see sleepers cracking, that means there’s a big problem with the ballast, especially if the crack runs in the middle of the sleeper and is visible topside.”
Maximum speeds that never exceed 160 kilometres per hour, poor track conditions which in many sections force trains to move at a crawl, derailments despite reduced speeds (the serious derailment back in February on the Thessaloniki-Eidomeni line shut it down for seven weeks), and brand-new sleepers cracking. Perhaps we are re-living once more the tragic story of the railways in the 1970s and 1980s, one also caused by crumbling track ballast?
“The only way to be sure is to do extensive testing of the track ballast currently on the track,” our source stressed.
Radio silence
At the end of January 2025 we submitted to OSE, ERGOSE, and the Ministry of Transportation formal document requests, asking for details on the gravel procurements. At the end of March, we submitted additional queries. Once more, we received no answers.
The data we requested covered all of the past thirty years, as consignments were made by all administrations. But the largest orders were placed, with the financial support of the European Union, in 2005-2007. The party in power at the time was New Democracy, and at the helm of the Ministry of Transportation was Michalis Liapis, member of the illustrious (or notorious, depending on your point of view) Karamanlis clan that have been prominent in Greek politics for decades. His uncle Konstantinos Karamanlis was prime minister during 1955-1963 and 1974-1980; another relative, Konstantinos Karamanlis (the younger), was minister of transport when the Tempi accident took place in 2023.
Karmanlis clan The Karmanlis family is a right-wing political dynasty which has been very prominent in Greek politics, along with the Mitsotakis family, for the past eighty years, alternating in power with the Papandreou family on the centre-left. This Balkan version of an ancien régime collapsed in 2010 with the advent of the financial crisis which decimated the country’s GDP and exposed its spiralling debt.
Konstantinos Karamanlis There have been at least three different (and prominent, for different reasons) Konstantinos Karamanlis in Greek politics. This particular scion is a cousin of Konstantinos Karamanlis, PM of Greece from 2003 to 2007, and famous for posting a photo from the inside of his car on Instagram, where it is clear he uses a detached seatbelt buckle clip to be able to drive without a seat belt without the alarm constantly beeping.
Despite our repeated reminders, we never received any response or evidence from OSE/ERGOSE. Not even a standard assurance that the track ballast of the modernised railway network conforms to the existing specifications. “It’s a crime,” our source says.Modern railway standards require homogeneous ballast from hard igneous rock (i.e. granite or dolerite). But the standards “have been thrown out the window. Instead, half the limestone of Greece has been laid on the railway. And where there is no limestone, the material is not homogeneous. No matter how many advanced systems you install on that line, trains will never run at 200 kilometres per hour,” they say.
“They were crumbling in our hands”
The gravel that ERGOSE purchased in 2006 for the country’s main Athens-Thessaloniki line, for a section near Lamia, was wholly unsuited to support trains. “It had been mixed with yellow rocks which were crumbling in our hands,” Reporters United was told by an experienced supervisor who had been in charge of overseeing the project. The person made a rough estimate that the batch of unsuitable material which was supposed to be used in the Tithorea-Lianokladi section, suggesting it was “at least 150,000 tonnes.”
“We sifted it, we washed it, and we ended up throwing away 40 per cent,” they added. Internal documents from ERGOSE confirm that special sifting equipment had to be employed in order to place the track ballast in this particular section. We have on record that the companies that undertook the Tithorea-Domokos section informed ERGOSE that special sifting equipment was needed in a memorandum dated February 2, 2015.
The material was ordered in 2006, the construction of the line started in 2014 and to this day trains on the section Tithorea-Lianokladi continue to run on that same track ballast. We submitted queries to the two suppliers for that specific railway section: Vassiliki Tsokani S.A. and TERNA S.A.
Vassiliki Tsokani S.A. – the company which supplied 180,000 tons of gravel for the section of railway from Tithorea-Lianokladi – has since suspended operations. No one considers themselves responsible for its past actions. The YLI S.A. corporation, managed by Charalambos Tsokanis, presents itself as “the heir of a dynamic family heritage”, continuing “the legacy, the values” of its predecessors – while keeping the building, and the telephone number of Vassiliki Tsokani S.A. Despite all this, when we spoke to Mr. Charalambos Tsokanis on the telephone, he claimed to know nothing about the previous company.
Not even a standard assurance that the track ballast of the modernised railway network conforms to the existing specifications. “It’s a crime,” our source says.
The other supplier for this stretch was the Greek construction giant TERNA, which we encountered in a three-fold capacity in a relevant document which Reporters United was able to consult entitled Contract #635: as supplier of track ballast, supplier of sleepers, and as a contractor for the project. The amount of track ballast provided by TERNA for the section Tithorea-Lianokladi was 395,000 tonnes, while Vassiliki Tsokani S.A.’s portion was 180,000 tonnes, which suggests the latter is a better fit for the description we received of a defective amount of “at least 150,000 tonnes”. TERNA informed us over the phone that they have their own “excellent-quality” quarry in Polykastro, Kilkis, which supplies the Greek railway.
The fact that the case was never resolved means that both YLI S.A. and TERNA continue to supply the Greek railway with ballast. We have in our hands two recent procurement orders in their name.
But the question remains whether this was an isolated incident. “I don’t know how many other projects, besides ours, used gravel of the same provenance,” our source says. “In any case, the yellow rocks that didn’t break during sifting were added to the line and are still there if anyone cares to go and take a look.”
How did it pass 50 inspections?
The engineering specifications stipulate that the gravel must be quarried from “healthy bedrock”, that “all impure and unhealthy masses” must be thrown out, and mandate at least one laboratory quality control inspection every 3,000 tonnes. This means that, supposing that the defective procurement which was delivered to ERGOSE in 2006 for the section Tithorea-Lianokladi was 150,000 tonnes, then it must have passed, on paper, fifty inspections. We don’t know if ERGOSE keeps records of these inspections.
The future
Instead of more transparency, over the years we see more obfuscation. We asked to be informed about the provenance of the gravel that will be used on the main Athens-Thessaloniki line (on the Domokos-Larisa section) and on the Larisa-Volos and Palaiofarsalos-Kalambaka lines, when they are finally be repaired after the damage they sustained during the catastrophic floods of 2023.
These contracts are funded by the European Union Recovery Instrument and were awarded directly to the construction companies METKA, AKTOR, and AVAX respectively. In this way, the companies themselves are responsible for the orders, and the provenance of the track ballast will not be mentioned in any public document we would be able to search for – which means that transparency is even more reduced than in the procurements of ERGOSE and OSE.
Our queries about the provenance of the track ballast that will be used in the new lines were completely ignored by METKA and AVAX, while AKTOR sent us the bromide that everything will be undertaken “within the timeframe and quality standards stipulated in the terms of the contract and always in accordance with the project’s technical specifications.”
But why, if everything will be done as it should, can’t we be informed about the quarries that will provide the gravel, the mineralogical profiles of said quarries, which agency has certified them, the method of sampling, and which laboratories are performing these inspections?
What lies at stake
If the foundations of the Greek railway network are laid upon unsuitable track ballast, then any discussion about its modernisation is meaningless. Signalling and safety systems, ETCS, GSM-R, new trains: all these depend upon a robust railway track. If the structure underpinning the network is crumbling, then it does not matter how many hundreds of millions of euros are spent or how many advanced systems are inaugurated – the trains will inevitably run slow.
Construction projects will be greenlit, ribbons will be cut, money will circulate, and everything will move – except the trains themselves.
