Railways come up trumps
There have been some remarkable projects completed in the railfreight transport segment in recent weeks – rather countercyclically. Our tour d’horizon here takes us from Germany to China and back again via Russia to Latvia and Finland.
Airfreight is struggling with great turbulence, containers are jammed in seaports, border checks on the roads are making freight traffic ever-more difficult. While almost every mode of transport is struggling with today’s extraordinary challenges, the railways are proving to be rather robust. The overall advantages of rail transport – less personnel-intensive, predestined to carry larger quantities of goods – have become even more obvious to market observers of late.
From west to east – for once
Operators and logisticians running services in the railway sector have therefore increasingly drawn observers’ attention to new links and extended services in recent weeks. The focus, somewhat naturally, lies on trains running between Europe and China. The national economy there has picked up speed again.
The best example is a blocktrain, run under Dachser’s aegis, that travelled from the inland port of Ludwigshafen (in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate) to the central Chinese city of Xi’an.
Cheaper coal transports
The freight consisted of BASF chemical products; the cargo was stowed in 42 containers. The transport took 14 days and set out from the Ludwigshafen combined transport terminal, from where it travelled to China via Poland, Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan.
The train was run by RTSB, with Dachser in charge of coordination and of customs clearance and distribution.
The rail link to Europe is particularly interesting for companies in the chemical industry, as they are often based in the Chinese hinterland, far from seaports. Railfreight transport also boosts Xi’an’s economy. In April, the Xi’an Railway Group lowered its tariffs for freight transport from parts of Shaanxi province, which has large coal mining areas. The reductions amount to up to 26% and are intended to boost domestic industrial activities.
A 1,000 m train on the tracks
The majority of intercontinental railfreight traffic still runs from east to west; there’s additionally a clear trend towards longer trains. A particularly long train reached the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea in mid-April.
According to the Latvian railway LDz, the train consisted of 100 20 ft containers, which resulted in a total length of 1,000 m. The longest train to cross Latvia before this had consisted of 75 wagons. To organise the transport through Latvia, LDz and its subsidiaries teamed up with the Russian Railways and with Transcontainer.
Latvian Railways has managed to acquire strong expertise in handling particularly long and heavy trains so far; it intends to further expand these activities.
Finland also preparing for long trains
Finland also wants to handle long trains from Russia in future. At the end of March the Finnish rail logistician VR Transpoint ran a train from the Vainikkala border station to the port of Hamina.
Two new electric Vectron locomotives meant the 6,000 t train with an overall length of 830 m didn’t have to be split for the first time. The tracks at Vainikkala station were extended to 1,000 m for this, thus eliminating time-consuming shunting.
VR Transpoint hopes the measures will increase overall capacities and improve transport processes both in Finland as well as in Russia.
