The invention concerns a method for blocking a working area (WA) within a railway network, the working area (WA) comprising one or more contiguous sections (S1, S2, S3) of a track (T) and the railway network comprising an interlocking (IL) and an axle counter with an axle counter evaluator (ACE), wherein the axle counter evaluator (ACE) outputs status information of the sections, and the interlocking (IL) outputs actual traffic information in due consideration of the status information, wherein: a maintainer sends a blocking request for blocking a requested working area (WA) to an operator or an operator terminal (OTT); a decision is made in dependence of the actual traffic situation whether to handover the blocking request to the axle counter evaluator (ACE) or not, in case of a handover a change of the status of all sections of the requested working area (WA) is carried out by setting the status information of said sections to "occupied". With the present invention the required level of safety can be ensured reliably without changing the interlocking logic.