There are signs that European Railfreight (at least in the “Old” EU) could see a rennaisance like the US has seen since the passage of the Staggers Act, for similar reasons, but with a European twist. There are other figures I haven’t quoted, like the fact that freight in the Netherlands has grown from 35.5 million tonnes in 2005 to 40 million tonnes in 2006 a growth of 12.6 % and an absolute record. This in a country with more mileage of navigable (and free) waterways, than railways. Railion Netherlands (DB in the Netherlands) share of the market has dropped from 85 % in 2005 to 77 % in 2006, yet their tonne/kilometers have grown, and they will show a profit for the first time in 2006. Order backlogs for equipment are growing at double digit rates, Rail Cargo Austria recently announced a 5-year program to replace 2/3rds of the railcar fleet with new cars and expand the fleet by 50 percent, and in the process double carrying capacity. There are a lot of new entrants into the industry and so far very few failures. There is a lot of money moving into the system on the operating side, along with new ideas, and new leaders. What happens when the capacity is filled is the big question. When the Open Access legislation was passed a lot of new projects to increase capacity were started, very slow progress by the Operating Companies in gaining the new traffic dampened a lot of the early enthusiasm. Hopefully the new figures for Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Austria will sustain the momentum to provide the necessary freight capacity and eliminate the bottlenecks.
At several plades, freight and passenger-trains have to compete for the limited capacity. Freight is generally third, after intercity- and local passenger-trains.
As to open access. Since it started, time to introduce a new container- or trailer-train on the north-south-route from Germany through Switzerland to Northern Italy shrank from one year to three months.
I would guess that it is close to one half is carload. Railion, SBB Cargo, Rail Cargo Austria, and to a lesser extent Green Cargo (Sweden) are all committed to carload freight. Railion’s Maschen Humpyard near Hamburg, and Rail Cargo Austria’s Kledering Yard near Vienna, both hump 5000+ cars per day. Much more than UP’s Bailey Yard humps. Railion has approved the construction of a modern humpyard with all the options, near Halle to replace the old Engleberg humpyard near Leipzig. There are a lot of carload customers between Halle and Merseberg. The new yard will have primary, secondary, and tertiary retarders, as well as cable powered mules for automatic trimming of the bowl tracks. As I mentioned earlier Rail Cargo Austria (RCA) is going to completely renew their car fleet. I have a Cabride Video showing the Austrian mainline (Westbahn) from Vienna to Salzburg and you would be amazed at the number of carload customers that you can see. The situation in Switzerland is similar.
Here are the results for the several of the biggest Intermodal Operators in Europe; Kombiverkehr which is a sister company to Railion, and Hupac which is mostly independent, Intercontainer hasn’t posted its results yet.
Company Total Units Change 2006 vs 2005
Kombiverkehr 930,984 units +14.6 %
Hupac 612,488 units +18.0 %
Unlike the US, the Railways of Europe do not directly provide Intermodal service. They work through 3rd party marketers like the Hub Group in the US. Sometimes the railroad owns the IM, sometimes not. The Intermodal terminals are also owned by the IM and not the Railway. There must be at least a dozen IMs with movements of over 100k units per year. Like the container shipping companies there is a lot of “Slot” sharing between the companies, the both compete and cooperate at the same time. another big IM is European Rail Shuttle, a subsidiary of the Containership company Maersk.
I would guess that it is close to one half is carload. Railion, SBB Cargo, Rail Cargo Austria, and to a lesser extent Green Cargo (Sweden) are all committed to carload freight. Railion’s Maschen Humpyard near Hamburg, and Rail Cargo Austria’s Kledering Yard near Vienna, both hump 5000+ cars per day. Much more than UP’s Bailey Yard humps. Railion has approved the construction of a modern humpyard with all the options, near Halle to replace the old Engleberg humpyard near Leipzig. There are a lot of carload customers between Halle and Merseberg. The new yard will have primary, secondary, and tertiary retarders, as well as cable powered mules for automatic trimming of the bowl tracks. As I mentioned earlier Rail Cargo Austria (RCA) is going to completely renew their car fleet. I have a Cabride Video showing the Austrian mainline (Westbahn) from Vienna to Salzburg and you would be amazed at the number of carload customers that you can see. The situation in Switzerland is similar.
You mention that Railion will soon show a profit for the first time,but do they pay the costs for this new humpyard near Halle or the state supported infrastructure company?
The German government will pay and the Railion will pay a per car fee. The big unknown is how much the land at Engleberg Yard will fetch when sold. Possible problems are that it is in the former East Germany where economic conditions aren’t as good as in the West. But there is a lot of land available for sale.
That’s interesting [ paying a fee per car], are private operators excluded from this deal?
I have had a look at the Railion website and they quote having 50 yards and 11 larger interregional marshalling yards!! I guess Halle figures as one of the major yards.
I’m a bit out of touch on this subject so i had a quick look thro the archives on x-rail. and
see that in the last couple of years Railion have put alot of money into updating quite a few other humpyards [ Seelze, Mannheim, Gremberg], perhaps a sign as to the future direction of
their business. Strange, as a few years ago European carload services had a bad reputation for
You had better believe it. No way will Railion allow a private operator into their humpyards. The independents are taking Railion to court over this. I would really like to see how the independents think it would work. It won’t work if all they are going to do is skim off the cream. SBB Cargo is providing limited carload service in Germany, but only for loads destined to Switzerland or Italy, and only from a few nodes. They are doing marshalling in the old disused Köln Eifeltor Yard, north of the Intermodal Center.
11 sounds about right for the number of Humpyards. Halle will replace Engleberg so the count won’t change. Halle is a small yard right now.
The MORA-C program was some painful cuts to the German carload network, but I think that they were a necessary adjustment to put the carload network on a commercial basis, rather than a social service. Switzerland went through the same process last year as the Swiss federal government is ending their subsidies for domestic carload services.
Average car load haul of 309K equates to approximately 185 miles…not a very long haul and with terminal costs on either end it is very likely unprofitable.
Have just found small interview given by the managing director of rail4chem, Matthias Raith,
complaining he can not get access to major hubs such as Maschen, because Railion has rented all major humpyards on a long-term basis!!
Just quick recap, the eleven major humpyards are Maschen,Seelze,Mannheim,Gremberg,Muenchen Nord,
Nuernberg,Hagen,Seddin,Engleberg,Dresden and ??? ,i’m missing one [according to the Railion site]
SBB Cargo are quite clever, and as you put it started to skim off the cream some years ago in the Antwerp region. The docks as you probably know generates a huge amount of high value chemical traffic. Normally these cars are sorted at the nearby Antwerpen Noord humpyard. Cars bound for Switzerland would firstly be forwarded to a yard in Germany. Now rail4chem run a daily unit train between the BASF plants at Antwerp and Ludwigshafen, and SBB Cargo saw the opportunity to hitch cars onto the back of this train. From BASFLudwigshafen they run a shuttle thro to Basle. Clever! Now no need to rely on SNCB and Railion!!
I wasn’t aware of that move by SBB Cargo, they seemed to have good relations with B-Cargo, and B-Cargo seems to be more of a heads-up operation than Trenitalia GL or SNCF Fret. But B-Cargo may be afraid of Railion.
The figure is for all non-Intermodal so there are unit trains in the mix. Work rules and such are much different than here, RCO is the rule, one man crews on all road trains, health insurance is government not employer provided etc. Car utilization is better too.
You had better believe it. No way will Railion allow a private operator into their humpyards. The independents are taking Railion to court over this. I would really like to see how the independents think it would work. It won’t work if all they are going to do is skim off the cream. SBB Cargo is providing limited carload service in Germany, but only for loads destined to Switzerland or Italy, and only from a few nodes. They are doing marshalling in the old disused Köln Eifeltor Yard, north of the Intermodal Center.
11 sounds about right for the number of Humpyards. Halle will replace Engleberg so the count won’t change. Halle is a small yard right now.
The MORA-C program was some painful cuts to the German carload network, but I think that they were a necessary adjustment to put the carload network on a commercial basis, rather than a social service. Switzerland went through the same process last year as the Swiss federal government is ending their subsidies for domestic carload services.
Click on netzplan at right and you get a map of germany and Austria. The names under it are the names of the various trains in the network. Locomotives are provided by Mittelweserbahn (http://www.weserbahn.de/7430.php, note the picture of the “cow” locomotive) and Regentalbahn (http://www.nordbayernbahn.de/rcargo_eccocargo.php with a map of southeast Germany), also know these days as Die Länderbahn, in Germany and Salzburger Lokalbahn in Austria.
I think import and export need to be export and import. At least according to this site: http://www.mylogistics.net/de/news/themen/key/news658242/jsp. Also interesting to note: export to Italy is 14.3 mil. tons and import from the Netherlands is 14.7 mil .tons.