STOCKHOLM, Jan. 17 (Xinhua) -- Swedish national rail company SJ has canceled many trains until the beginning of March due to heavy snowfalls and unusually cold weather hitting the country this winter, SJ spokesperson Marcus Fleetwood told Swedish Television (SVT) on Wednesday.

       "We have seen extreme weather conditions for the trains this winter," Fleetwood said, adding that this situation is preventing the company from carrying out maintenance works as planned.

       On Wednesday, 25 percent of the trains between Stockholm and Umea, a university town some 600 kilometers north of the capital, were canceled, the SVT reported.

       Other lines affected include those between Stockholm and the city of Gothenburg, Stockholm and Malmo, Stockholm and Uppsala, and the line between Linkoping and Gavle via Stockholm.

       Several passengers interviewed by the SVT said they would now opt for taking a flight instead of a train, an unwelcome attitude change in a country bent on fighting climate change.

       Since the beginning of January, Sweden has been hit by two blizzards and seen temperatures in the northern part of the country dropping below minus 40 degrees Celsius.

       The exceptional cold spell has made this winter the coldest in 25 years in Sweden, forcing rail companies to cancel trains to avoid the risk of passengers getting stranded in freezing temperatures in case of a power outage.

       StarPicks

       UEM Sunrise introduces flexible, customisable and convenient living at The Connaught One (TOD)

       Temperatures in the south have also been lower than usual.

       "It is very unusual that we have such a cold winter across the country and exceptional that we are forced to make weather-related train cancellations. We will look into whether we can do things differently in the future but it is difficult to de-ice trains as a preventive measure," Fleetwood told SVT.