The so-called shunting agreement is “essential to provide clarity and certainty to all parties involved during the execution of works along the entire port railway”, the Port of Rotterdam says. It defines the procedures for transferring trains administratively and physically, and which responsibilities apply to both contractors and clients.

Pilot

The project ‘Track Together’ will initially run for seven months in a pilot format. If proven successful, it will continue on a structural basis. Its goal is to prevent train cancellations and long delays. Terminals will benefit, according to the port, because their tracks can also be freed up for other planned trains.

“Track Together strengthens cooperation between rail operators in the Port of Rotterdam. By sharing information more effectively, the platform contributes to more efficient operations and a more reliable rail network for all parties involved”, commented Jordy Hermes, Product Design Specialist at LTE.

The two new links run on fixed timetables. RCG also offers first and last mile services, forwarding services such as transshipment, warehousing and professional customs clearance. “Freight customers can easily and flexibly book conventional freight wagons or intermodal units such as containers or swap bodies onto the train connections”, the company writes.

Various industries benefit

“The further development of our TransFER connections shows how consistently we align our services with the needs of our customers”, says ÖBB Rail Cargo Group CCO Christoph Grasl. “With new direct and reliable connections, we are improving access to key logistics hubs and creating attractive conditions for the switch to rail.”

RCG explains that these services are particularly beneficial for the chemical, steel, and paper industries. “These sectors gain the most from the enhanced transportation options and simultaneously drive the demand for our services”, the operator says, while pointing out that rail services offer higher transport capacity and reliability than the road, especially for long distances.

The Duisburg-Rotterdam service offers a direct link, initially with three round trips per week, between the Rheinkamp logistics hub near Duisburg and the major terminals of the Port of Rotterdam (Waalhaven, Europoort, Botlek, Pernis, and Maasvlakte). By connecting to Duisburg, one of Europe’s most significant inland ports, the service allows for efficient onward rail transport to destinations in Europe, says RCG.

The Salzburg-Offenbach link runs twice weekly, connecting the Austrian railway hub to an important logistics and industrial center in the Rhine-Main area near Frankfurt am Main.

Romanian connection

RCG is also changing its Romania service offering. The previous connection between Genk (Belgium) and Curtici, on the border with Hungary, will now be a Liège–Curtici link and operate with seven weekly round trips. Liege offers strong connections to the North Sea ports of Rotterdam, Antwerp and Zeebrugge and serves as a powerful hub between seaports, industrial centres and inland markets, RCG explains.

At the same time, RCG is introducing a new Duisburg–Curtici connection with three weekly round trips. “This means that traffic to Curtici will now be consolidated via both Liège and Duisburg”, the operator says.

In the Port of Hamburg, operations were suspended as of the early morning on 9 January. METRANS says that the situation is similar in Gdańsk, Rotterdam and Wilhelmshaven. “The current outlook is very negative, and it is expected that there will be no improvement before the first half of next week. Individual infrastructure providers are constantly bringing more bad news.”

Deutsche Bahn states that weather-related cancellations and delays are taking place across northern Germany. Some lines may unfortunately have to be suspended entirely, according to the rail holding. In parts of Poland, the situation seems to be similar, with trains occasionally running into problems and causing delays.

Hindrances continue in the Netherlands despite thawing

Dutch infrastructure manager ProRail says that a malfunction at the important Kijfhoek rail yard, near Rotterdam, is continuing to disrupt rail freight services. Despite the thawing in the Rotterdam area, companies still cannot operate on a normal schedule.

“We’re experiencing significant disruption due to the rail restrictions”, DB Cargo Netherlands spokesperson Jelle Rebbers told ProRail. “Many switches we need to reach customers are stuck. This means customers can’t be reached for extended periods. Factories can literally grind to a halt. The weather is thawing now, and more and more is becoming available.”

Rebbers says that DB Cargo is “significantly behind and will need to do a lot more work in the coming period to catch up. Moreover, a lot of snow is forecast for the coming days, so we’re not there yet.”

METRANS explained that 20 centimetres of snow prevented the acceptance of containers and made handling them difficult or impossible. “The delays arising during this period will not be easy to recover”, the rail operator said about the disruptions. The other German North Sea ports, Bremerhaven and Wilhelmshaven, were said to be operating without major problems.

Outage in Rotterdam

In the Netherlands, the winter weather has also made an impact on rail operations. All passenger trains were cancelled across the country on Tuesday morning, whereas freight operations seemed to be running without major issues at first. There were some frozen switches here and there, and some landside terminal operations in the Port of Rotterdam were paused on Monday for snow clearing. Operations restarted over the course of the afternoon, the Rotterdam port tells RailFreight.com.

However, the Waalhaven part of the Rotterdam port encountered more serious obstacles on Tuesday morning. The entire port section is currently closed for rail traffic due to failing overhead traction lines, switches and an IT malfunction. Currently, the Waalhaven outage is projected to last until the late morning. “That would limit the impact of the situation, but if it lasts the entire day, then no trains at all will make it into the Waalhaven today”, comments Hupac’s operations director Mark Jansen.

Update: Traffic will be down until at least 17:00 today.

A closure lasting the entire day could have a greater impact and lead to more serious delays. However, the situation is helped by the fact that this early January week is not a busy period in terms of rail freight operations.

Why does winter weather lead to rail chaos?

Infrastructure manager ProRail took the opportunity to explain why winter weather leads to such problems on the Dutch rail network, in contrast to countries such as Switzerland or Norway, which face much more intense winter weather but manage to keep their trains running.

The Netherlands does not often get large amounts of snow or harsh winter temperatures, and has therefore decided not to invest in similar rail heating systems to battle the cold and prevent frozen switches, for example. The Dutch have decided that those couple of days per year are not worth the billions of euros that would be needed to keep the rail network stable during that timeframe, ProRail says.

For this operation, the Dutch government will provide 158 million euros, while the municipality and port of Rotterdam will pitch in with another 169 million euros. Other than moving the yard, the funds will be used for the electrification of the ‘distri triangle’ and the outer contour, the modification of the C2 bend and the realization of two drive-through tracks.

Further expansion possibilities

The future yard in the Maasvlakte area has been under construction since last October and it will be put into operation in 2027. It will feature six bundle tracks, increasing the maximum train length allowed from 600 to 740 metres, as European standards dictate. On top of this, another yard will be built between 2030 and 2035 with the possibility for further expansion in the 2040-2050 period, if demand requires it.

Geef Tegengas states as its goal the dismantling of the “logistics empire”, which in their view contributes to climate change and weapon transport to Israel. Some of the activists had chained themselves to the rails. Contrary to earlier protests in the port, the police intervened this time around. Some 300 protestors were arrested.

On Friday, the group had also stated that other protests on infrastructure would take place across Europe over the weekend, but protests of a similar scale do not seem to have taken place.

Rail freight reaction

Dutch rail freight association RailGood, represented by its director Hans-Willem Vroon, responded positively to the intervention of the police on LinkedIn: “Compliments to the Rotterdam police. This time around, it intervened well and quickly against some 400 (green) left activists who are blocking the port railway line that is vital for Europe”.

“The railway is not a public space”, Vroon continued. “It is prohibited territory to demonstrate. It is extremely dangerous for the safety and health of the activists themselves to block the railway. With these kinds of actions, the logistics chain is disrupted throughout Europe.”

Neither APM Terminals nor Rotterdam World Gateway were available for comment, so it remains unclear what the immediate impact is on rail freight operations. Geef Tegengas says that they are only blocking the road entrances, but more protests are planned during the weekend.

The group refused to share specific plans for the coming days, but earlier said that “the protest takes place ahead of the mass blockade ‘Rotterdam Block Party: No Bombs, Barrels and Bullshit’, where hundreds of people will halt the port and its deadly operations. The protests are part of an international series of protests against the logistics empire – infrastructure will be blocked in all of Europe this weekend.”

Investigations in the terminals

Spokesperson Sara van Veen says that the Rotterdam municipality and the port authority refuse to be transparent about the goods moving through the port. “A motion calling on the council to investigate the human rights violations in which the port is involved has still not been implemented after months. That is why we are forced to conduct our own investigation and expose the scandals in the port.”

Some of the activists have taken matters into their own hands and have gone into the terminals to find out what is being transported. “The decision to block APM and RWG is not random. Maersk and MSC use these terminals to handle the weapon transports to Israel. Without weapons, no genocide”, they say.

The six rail blockades between April and June led to hundreds of thousands of euros in financial damages. Dozens of trains were stuck, which on April 24 led to 150,000 euros in damages per hour (the protest lasted for 3.5 hours in total).

Back on the tracks

After a summer hiatus, climate activism is back on the Rotterdam railways. On Sunday 5 October, XR and two other groups occupied the railway to protest coal transportation. This time around, the protest was not so much about just “blocking”, but also “undermining”: the activists sought to remove the ballast from underneath the tracks, which would mean that trains would no longer be able to safely run there.

“After inspection by the maintenance contractor, the damage turned out to be greater than expected”, a spokesperson of infrastructure manager ProRail told SpoorPro. “Ballast has also been removed from under the sleepers, and this requires repair with larger equipment.”

The municipality facilitates

“Demonstrating is a fundamental right”, the spokesperson added, “but demolishing the track is not one of them,” she adds. The rail infrastructure manager previously called the action “unacceptable”. It wasn’t the first time that the activists removed stones from beneath freight railway lines, as they had previously done so in the port of Amsterdam.

A spokesperson for the activist groups said they were not stopped by police, “not even when we went under the fence and removed stones.” The municipality announced last week that it would not ban the action and would facilitate it, specifically to ensure it was as safe as possible. The municipality position, similar to the one it adopted earlier this year, could not count on much sympathy from the involved rail parties.

VEGA and VTG’s r2l system

The r2l (short for roadrailLink) system consists of a “platform or ramp that terminal cranes and reach stackers can lift vertically onto and off double pocket wagons”. Truck drivers position the semi-trailers onto the r2l platform and drive away. Cranes can then lift the semi-trailers and platform and lay them onto the wagons.

Over the past year or so, a few companies have chosen the railways for their transport operation using the r2l connector, as VEGA calls it. CFL Cargo and VOS Logistics, for example. The former started a service between Luxembourg and Romania, while the latter is now using freight trains to move silo-trailers between Dourges and Venissieux in France.

Similarly, the Antwerp-Bruges port states that there is relatively little congestion for sea ships, although barges can still encounter problems. The primary issue, according to their Rotterdam counterparts, is with hinterland transport.

Despite the decline of rail’s share in the modal split, Rotterdam says that rail freight is still indispensable resolving those problems. Antwerp also points to “robust infrastructure”, but does not single out rail as a solution for congestion issues.

Ongoing improvements and a role for rail

“In order to continue transporting the increasing flow of containers to the hinterland in an efficient manner, the Port of Rotterdam, [Dutch infrastructure manager] ProRail, and the Ministry of Infrastructure are investing in sustainable and efficient rail development”, the Rotterdam port says. It hopes to achieve sufficient rail capacity, reliable infrastructure and affordable rail usage fees in the Netherlands.

In addition, the APMT and RWG terminals in Rotterdam are currently getting an expansion, which is set to nearly double container capacity. What’s more, a digitisation programme by the name of Rail Connected looks to improve efficiency, transparency, and cooperation in rail freight. It does so through standardised data exchanges between terminals, rail operators, and carriers.

Those steps will contribute to an increase in container handling capacity, but disruptions and volatility will remain. And for that reason, there is no predictable end date for the port congestion. “It is important to make maximum use of the existing port infrastructure to strike a balance between the seaside and the hinterland”, the Rotterdam port adds. It wants to be resilient and have the ability to deal with future disruptions – and rail can play a role in that.