The train took about 3 hours and 15 minutes for the 540-kilometer route to Tokyo on 23 March. Freight, among which is food, medical equipment and machine parts, is loaded with autonomously operated carts.

Besides declining passenger demand, the move to use the high-speed train for freight is also motivated by truck driver shortages. The Shinkansen E3-2000 reaches a top speed of 275 kilometers per hour and can transport 1000 boxes with a weight of 17.4 tonnes.

Italian adventure

The Italian rail freight operator Mercitalia also briefly operated a high-speed service. It launched the service in November 2018, offering a travel time of around four hours at an average speed of 177 kilometres per hour between the northern and southern regions of the country. ‘Mercitalia Fast’ was discontinued after four years in November 2022.

Japan Rail is now eyeing the production of a cargo version of the Shinkansen while increasing the number of connections. The group highlights several factors in favour of its development: the shortage of truck drivers, the growing demand for rapid deliveries of perishable goods and the pressure to reduce CO2 emissions.

Amazon experience in Europe

In Europe, the latest attempt to incorporate high-speed rail into parcel delivery operations came in May last year when Amazon began using SNC’s Paris-Lyon passenger service to transport 2,000 parcels on a daily basis. Trains cover the distance in less than two and a half hours rather than the eight hours taken by truck. Amazon’s premier experience of high-speed rail took place in Italy, having been a customer on state-owned logistics group FS’ Mercitalia Fast service between Naples and Bologna. But this was discontinued in November 2022.

Euro Carex project

Going back a couple of decades, Europe had high hopes for this type of transport for freight. Euro Carex (CArgo Rail EXpress) was a European express rail freight network project that aimed to use existing high-speed lines during off-peak passenger traffic hours (mainly at night) with trains adapted for parcel transport. It was pitched as an alternative to air and road freight over distances of between 200 and 800 km.

In March 2012, a test took place with an all-freight TGV leaving Lyon Saint-Exupéry Airport with a capacity to 120 tonnes of cargo (the equivalent of seven semi-trailers), arriving at St Pancras Station in London in the early hours of the following morning. The itinerary included a stop at Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle Airport to demonstrate the ability to take on additional cargo.

The 900 kilometres were covered at 270 kilometres per hour for two-thirds of the journey, nearly four times the speed of a conventional freight train. However, despite bringing together a number of major public and private players – Paris-CDG, Lyon and Amsterdam airports, SNCF, Europorte and potential future customers such as Air France KLM Cargo, UPS, Chronopost International and FedEx Express, the ambitious project was ultimately shelved due to the cost of development and the volumes required to reach the break-even point.

Each train will need more traction power, which is now all in the hands of the locomotives. “The long and heavy trains required by the EU may result in unavailable power in single or double traction, especially in uphill conditions, overheating of brakes on descent, loss of grip, and breakage of head hooks”, Dalla Chiara pointed out.

‘Such vehicle does not exist’

On the other hand, if the power were to be distributed throughout the train via the wagons, these issues would be solved, he claimed. “Charging times of an air tank – for braking – are significantly shorter and wagons are individually diagnosable (axles, bushings, brake systems) remotely”. This would also facilitate the transport of temperature sensitive cargo on longer routes, since the conditions could be monitored and adjusted in real-time for each wagon.

In reality, however, a rail freight wagon with the ability to generate traction power does not yet exist. Ideally, according to him, new freight trains would be powered through “multiple traction, distributed power, with individual groups of electrified wagons and with electric braking control on the individual wagon”. Moreover, the wagons would be flat to be suitable for intermodal transport.

The professor, however, highlighted that this is not necessarily an insurmountable problem. On the contrary, this could be an opportunity for the rail manufacturing industry to expand their horizons and contribute to national economies. Creating such a train would “renew supply, attract demand and reduce impedance, seriously pandering to the modern logic of sustainability”, he stressed.

Why the Italian experiment failed

The Italian rail freight operator Mercitalia ran a high-speed rail service on behalf of Amazon between 2018 and 2022, called Mercitalia Fast. The train, an ETR 500 usually deployed for passenger transport, linked Marcianise, near Naples, and Bologna in three and a half hours. ‘Borrowing’ a passenger train rather than creating one specifically for freight was done “perhaps to avoid having to think about a next-generation freight train for intermodal transport”, Dalla Chiara underlined.

Another issue was the fact that the Mercitalia Fast service was dedicated to Less-Than-Truckload shipping, which is a rarely profitable segment. “This laziness or lack of courage led to the decline of the initiative, perhaps discouraging other applications”, he added. Perhaps Italy will have a new opportunity to explore high-speed rail freight once the Turin-Lyon highway opens in the 2030s, Dalla Chiara concluded, hopefully with better results.