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.

“With the shuttle Contargo offers companies in the region a reliable and sustainable transport solution”, the company adds.

The European Silk Road Summit

The rise of vertical integrated logistics companies will be one of the focus points of the upcoming European Silk Road Summit, taking place on 19 and 20 November in Milan, Italy. There, we will analyse how big shipping lines such as MSC, Maersk, COSCO and indeed CMA CGM have undertaken a new approach and took over operations along the whole supply chain.

The event will also be the only chance to get your hands on the very first edition of the RF Magazine, RailFreight.com’s newest printed product. Check out the programme of the European Silk Road Summit here and get your ticket here.

Most notably, the railway between Hamburg and Berlin will remain inaccessible until April 2026. There are currently modernisation works ongoing, forcing trains to take detours through Hannover and Rostock.

The positive numbers for rail were not the only factor for HHLA’s intermodal growth. Road transport also registered a significant jump, from 56,000 to 68,000 TEUs (+20.4%), for a total of 496,000 TEUs handled intermodally. These growths in volumes translated into higher financial figures as well. Both the revenue (+33.1%) and EBIT (+42.1%) significantly increased for HHLA during the first quarter of 2025.

The rest of the HHLA Group

The HHLA group did relatively well in all categories during the beginning of this year. The Port Logistics subgroup increased its revenue by 20.1%, while profit after tax went from -3.4 million euros in Q1 2024 to 5.8 million euros in the first three months of 2025. Container throughput at the company’s terminals rose by 5.5% reaching 1,5 million TEUs.

A strong increase was recorded at HHLA container terminals outside the German borders. “In addition to the slight volume growth at the multifunctional terminal HHLA TK Estonia, this was also due in particular to the resumption of seaborne container handling at Container Terminal Odessa (CTO) starting in the third quarter of 2024”, the company said.

HHLA’s Real Estate subgroup also posted positive numbers, despite being a little lower than the rest of the group. Both revenue and EBIT were around 2% higher than in the first quarter of last year. The growth here is attributed to “increased rental income and a decrease in maintenance costs”.

“The system primarily aims to improve workplace safety by reducing manual tasks in potentially hazardous areas – as well as automating the activity itself”, HHLA explains to RailFreight.com. “At the same time, it has the potential to enhance cost-effectiveness by streamlining operations.”

Proven feasibility

HHLA is optimistic about the potential of the pin handling robot. “While it is not yet more cost-efficient than manual handling, initial tests show that automation could lead to long-term efficiency gains by minimising delays and optimising workflows. The extent of these benefits will become clearer as the technology matures and is further refined.”

“This research project has shown that the automation of pin handling in rail processing is technically feasible”, said Pablo Rossio, project manager at HHLA. “The insights gained from this research now form the basis for further evaluation of its operational use. […] In the next phase, we aim to further develop this technology to enable its application in productive operations.”

Additional trials

HHLA explains that further refinements are needed in precision, speed, and integration with terminal systems. “Challenges include adapting to different rail configurations, combining data by rail operators, OCR and Terminal Operating System and meeting industry standards. Tests so far have been promising, with the system successfully performing pin handling, but additional trials will ensure consistency and robustness across various operational scenarios.”

There is no clear timeframe yet for the further development of the system. More research and development are necessary to get it up to standard. But, says HHLA, a decision will be made on the potential scope of a follow-up project.

The Hamburg port was not handed this result on a silver plate. Rather, it faced abrupt route closures for almost an entire month in the summer of 2024. Rail freight traffic was only possible for exceptional cases during the day, RailFreight.com reported at the time.

Even before the summer came to an end, misfortune struck the port once more. Terminal staff went on strike, after which the port could not accept any freight trains coming in. Delays then grew to be as long as 24 hours. Despite this, 2024 turned out to be a good year for rail at the Hamburg port.

Trains run six times per week between Maschen, south of Hamburg, to Malmö in southern Sweden. Previously, only 740-metre trains were allowed beyond Fredericia. But now, 835-metre trains weighing 2,300 tonnes are also making their way across the strait.

First test in 2021

A first test with a 835-metre train over the Öresund bridge was carried out in 2021. At the time, Sweden only allowed trains with a maximum length of 630 metres on its network, with a single exception in the north.

Trains of 835 metres in length would boost the capacity of a single train up to 55 45-foot containers, compared to the previous 41 units.

“In order to improve the condition of the infrastructure on the busy Hamburg – Berlin route and to avoid recurring construction sites in the future, we have decided on a general renovation”, says Wolfgang Weinhold, Generalsanierung program manager at DB InfraGO. A total of 1,500 kilometers of track are to be completely renovated by 2027.

ETCS

As part of the works, DB will renew more than 180 kilometers of tracks and around 200 switches between Hamburg and Berlin. It will build six additional so-called transfer points, which “will create more stability and flexibility in operations” by letting faster passenger trains overtake slower freight trains, for instance. The highest-capacity routes will first be equipped with the new European train control system ETCS.