Nádražní Shuts for Sixteen Days While the Second Half of the Railway Bridge Goes In

Nádražní closes between U železničního mostu and No. 308/66 from the evening of Friday 2 October until the morning of Monday 19 October. Prague 5 gives the reason in one line: the erection of the steel structure of the railway bridge, as part of the reconstruction of the railway line. Trams stop running between Na Knížecí and Smíchovské nádraží from 3 to 18 October, which takes out lines 5, 12, 15, 20, 21 and 94 along with night services 901 and 907.

The sixteen days are the price of a single span, and it is worth saying which one. The 1955 structure over Nádražní was taken down in the spring of 2025 and the line ran single-track across the gap. In July that year the first half arrived from Metrostav's base in Horní Počernice on a 59-metre transporter weighing 310 tonnes with its load, closing Nádražní for a week while it was seated; trains began using it that November. Prague 5's own notice from January 2025 put the second phase of both the Nádražní and Hořejší nábřeží structures in 2026, and by August 2026 Zdopravy.cz could report that trains were running on the completed structure over Nádražní while Hořejší nábřeží was still being crossed on a temporary steel bridge. On that published sequence, what is being lowered into place this month is the second half — and unlike the first, it carries two tracks.

Why this bridge and not the other two

Of the three bridges between Smíchov station and the Vltava crossing at Výtoň, only this one is being rebuilt to three tracks, which it will have in 2028. The structures over Svornosti and Strakonická are going in as two-track provisional bridges, with their capacity left to be solved later. Správa železnic has been explicit that the new bridge at Výtoň, which the Nádražní span will eventually feed, needs three tracks as a condition of running the traffic the section is expected to carry. The awkward part of that is already visible in the published plans: a three-track bridge at each end of a pair of two-track provisionals in the middle.

What runs instead

Daytime service south of the closure holds together on two island routes. Tram 32 runs Smíchovské nádraží – Lihovar – Hlubočepy – Sídliště Barrandov – Slivenec, and tram 40 runs Smíchovské nádraží – Lihovar – Dvorce – Přístaviště – Nádraží Braník – Sídliště Modřany/Levského. Replacement bus X12 links Anděl – Na Knížecí – Smíchovské nádraží by day; at night X90 runs Palackého náměstí/Karlovo náměstí – Anděl – Zlíchov.

Cars towards Smíchovské nádraží are sent Ostrovského – Vltavská – Svornosti – U Královské louky – Nádražní; in the other direction Nádražní – U Královské louky – Strakonická – Hořejší nábřeží – Na Valentince – Nádražní. Pedestrians go Nádražní – U železničního mostu – Strakonická – Kotevní – Nádražní.

The wider site

The modernisation of the station and its tracks is costing Správa železnic 5.1 billion crowns and is due to finish at the end of 2028, with the separate bus and transfer terminal, a city investment, put at 7.12 billion in its tender. In August the builders were finishing the existing third and an entirely new fourth platform, both roofed, with escalators going in on the footbridge that will tie Smíchov to Radlice — and both platforms were due to open to the public in October.

That is the thing to hold alongside the closure notice. The same month that costs the Smíchov trams two and a half weeks also gives the station two working platforms it did not have, and leaves the bridge that limits the whole section one structure short of finished.