RCG says the Verona-Wuppertal service will “create a direct network connection without a stopover for continental flows of goods between northern Italy and the Ruhr region” and could relieve the congestion in the Tyrol area. The service operates on a three-weekly round-trip basis and will transport goods between the Sommacampagna-Sona terminal near Verona and the DUSS terminal in Wuppertal-Langerfeld.

Gotthard Tunnel accident

The Gotthard Tunnel accident occurred on Tuesday, 10 August, when a train derailed inside the tunnel. The accident has received much attention in the European rail freight world as few alternative routes are available for the traffic between Italy and Switzerland. The Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) specified that the accident was caused by an issue with the convoy and not with the infrastructure.

Clearance and rescue works in the western tube of the Gotthard Tunnel are expected to be finished by the end of September. SBB is currently working on removing the impacted wagons and locomotives, with eight railcars remaining in the tunnel waiting to be removed. After completing this task, carried out in parallel with the tunnel’s damage assessment, SBB will be able to commence reconstruction, which is not expected to be finished before 2024.

Also read: 

• Gotthard Tunnel’s closure prolonged, no re-opening date in sight
• Channel Tunnel freight traffic does not avoid ongoing volume slump
• Excavations started for Scan-Med Corridor line upgrade in Italy

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New opportunities

“With the trains to and from Mortara in northern Italy, we are strengthening our services via the Gotthard corridor, which will become increasingly important for our customers,” said Kombiverkehr’s General Manager Alexander Ochs. The new service will provide customers with additional options for transporting their goods, characterised by diversity and on-point connectivity with central European hubs.

“Combined with Brenner and Tauern’s services, the service through Gotthard will contribute to Kombiverkehr’s strategy to overtake the most important European routes between Italy and Germany, Benelux and further Scandinavia”, added Peter Dannewitz, Head of Sales at Kombiverkehr.

Read also:

• Kombiverkehr adds new intermodal service via Brenner Pass
• Kombiverkehr expands services on Germany-Italy corridor

But low fuel prices and automative innovations means rail freight is still ‘noticeably losing ground’ to road transport, it said. The company said it needed to look at cutting costs and increasing train capacities to tackle impending national subsidy cuts.

Core market

In its core market of transalpine consignments through Switzerland, Hupac’s traffic grew by 19.4 per cent last year, through a combination of the four-metre trailer market operated by its Shuttle Net division, and the Company Shuttle Division, which operates block trains for major customers. Around 110 trains were in use every day, between Europe and Russia and, increasingly, the Far East.

The growth strategy Hupac adopted in 2015 has delivered economic success, with annual profits of 10.8 million Swiss Francs last year, and a 6.2 per cent increase in the number employees, up to 429. However it has been preparing for the abolition of Swiss subsidies for combined traffic at the end of 2023, and that lower production costs and more payload-per-train ‘was the motto’ for the future.

Intentions

The company, which celebrated its 70th anniversary in 2016, signalled its intentions this week with the ordering of eight Vectron MS locomotives from Siemens. The ETCS-equipped locos, with a top speed of 160 km/h, will serve the key Benelux-Germany-Austria-Switzerland corridors, and will be delivered from the summer of 2018.

Hans-Jörg Bertschi, chairman of Hupac Ltd, said: “The parameters of 2000-tonne train weight with one engine, 740-metre train length and 4-metre profile are the basic prerequisites for a cost-effective operation of the combined traffic. In order to compensate for the abolition of Swiss subsidies from 2023, we have to increase productivity continuously and at all levels.

‘Losing ground’

“While road markedly improves its competitiveness through low diesel prices and innumerable innovations, rail is noticeably losing ground,” he added.

Hupac said that two-thirds of the value of current subsidies could be offset if infrastructures were consistently upgraded along the length of the Alpine corridor, but as things stood ‘these could not be guaranteed’. One-third could not be compensated for, which presented a ‘serious risk’ for combined traffic in transit through Switzerland. Numerous construction sites in the rail network will also pose a burden in the coming years, with problems arising from a lack of international coordination and a poor assessment of market requirements.

‘Delayed integration’

Concerns have also been raised about the new Gotthard base tunnel, which began operations in December, which despite ‘progressing smoothly’, has also seen ‘delayed international integration’. The heavy freight trains passing through the Gotthard tunnel, said Hupac, need one locomotive less on the flat track via Luino, and this important productivity gain will only be possible on the route via Chiasso from 2020, when the Ceneri base tunnel starts operation.

“It has not yet been possible to achieve shorter travelling times in international traffic,” said Bertschi. “In the Benelux-Germany-Switzerland-Italy corridor, the same timetables are being used as 2015, (and) 90 per cent of the potential savings time is offset by waiting. An internationally-agreed train path-planning, which will pass on the advances in productivity from the Gotthard base tunnel to the market, is still in its infancy.”

Route plan

The company has called for a unilaterally-agreed route plan for Swiss transit along the Benelux/Germany/Switzerland/Italy freight corridor to help achieve the aspired effect of the ‘NEAT’ system, which aims to plan and set the frequencies of route capacities. “If the trains run instead of waiting at the the border, everybody wins; the tracks are free, locomotives and drivers can be more productively deployed, the rotation of the wagons improves, terminal slots are used better and the customers are happy,” it said in a statement.

“Halving the train path prices for freight traffic, as is currently under discussion in Germany, is a clear signal with an immediate effect on modal shift,” added Hans-Jörg Bertschi. “Switzerland, with its considerably high train path prices, should shake this transparent and discrimination-free modal shift tool into consideration.”

Renovation has begun of the Swiss Bellinzona-Sao Paolo freight station, marking another key step for the future of freight along the vital Switzerland-Italy Gotthard link. SBB Cargo is investing around 100 million Francs on the project, which will last until 2020. 

The expansion is part of the Swiss rail operator’s ZEB (Future Development of Railway Infrastructure) programme, which aims to increase capacity on the Gotthard axis. It includes a new 750 metre-long overpass track built specially for freight traffic at the San Paolo junction, which will ensure that timetables are met.

‘Great importance’

SBB says the Bellinzona-San Paolo project ‘is of great importance’ for freight transport on the north-south axis, and follows the long-awaited opening in December of the new Gotthard Basin Tunnel. Next in the pipeline is the planned opening of the Ceneri Basin Tunnel in 2020.

This will ultimately mean a high-speed freight rail link to Europe is viable, after what the port describes as ‘decades of dislocation’ from the national grid. The new terminal was funded by both Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (RFI), the subsidiary company of the Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane Group responsible for rail infrastructure management, and the regional government of Tuscany.

New infrastructure

Giuliano Gallanti, Chairman of Livorno Port Authority, said: “Investments in the port rail network will add to capacity and allow more traffic to and from the terminals. By linking directly the new infrastructure to the rail network, the facility will offer importers and exporters an all rail-route to warehousing and manufacturing centres in Italy and beyond.”

Graziano Delrio, Italian Minister for Infrastructure, said : “This is a unique project within the Mediterranean, and will be a calling card for Italy, which needs to become the wharf of Europe. With the new goods terminal at Leghorn (Livorno) Dockyard, we are completing the last mile that will allow the entire logistical system, and therefore the businesses that make use of it, to maximise efficiency via a direct link between sea and rail.

Ensure efficiency

“It’s another dose of the ‘iron cure’ we have administered to the infrastructure and freight transport system, which is also planned as part of the reform of ports. The rail-sea intermodality between ports and rail freight corridors in Europe is one of the keys to ensure efficiency and innovation to the country’s production system.”

Crucially, the terminal and the new track connecting it with the Genoa-Rome rail line are able to accommodate the 750 metre-long trains which are becoming so important to network operators and customers within the European cargo market, and even more so with the recent opening of the new Gotthard Tunnel which links Italy to northern Europe.

Strategically important

Funding has come from RFI and Tuscany Region, and it provides a rail yard linked to Terminal Darsena Toscana, the port’s most strategically important container terminal, and three kilometre-long rail lines going from the port to national network.

Enrico Rossi, President of Tuscany Region, said: “The region is investing in Livorno port and we are willing to continue to do so in 2017, with the flying junction that will connect the harbour to the new freight depot, where we’ve invested nine million Euros out of a total 14 million Euros, as well as the Europa dockyard. The region has allocated 250 million Euros for the latter, committing its budget for the next 30 years.”

Two decades in its construction, the 57km (35-mile) twin-bore tunnel – the longest railway tunnel in the world – provides a high-speed rail link under the Swiss Alps between northern and southern Europe and is set to revolutionise European freight transport. Goods currently carried on the route by a million lorries a year will now go by train.

Marshalling yards

Around 160 freight trains can currently travel on the Gotthard north-south axis daily, but from the start of the new timetable on December 11th, this will increase to 210. Swiss rail operator SBB, which accounts for around a quarter of all the country’s road/rail transport volume, is also making improvements to its freight capacity.

SBB Cargo says customers will receive efficient, congestion-free and environment-friendly solutions for their logistics requirements. With up to 750-metre-long trains, SBB Cargo will be able to operate even more efficiently. As of the 2016/2017 timetable change, up to give freight trains will be able to run every hour in each direction – almost twice as many as today.

Up to three deliveries and collections will thus be made every day at busy operating points in Ticino. Successful test runs were held last week and the first official service, a special train with both passenger and freight wagons, departs from Basel at 4.55am on Sunday December 11th.

Train protection software

Bombardier Transportation has confirmed that its Bombardier Traxx locomotives, which have been upgraded with the latest automatic train protection software, have been approved for operation on the new tunnel. It is a partnership that also involves the Swiss Federal Office of Transport (FOT), SBB Infra and BLS Cargo.

Albert Bastius, Head of Product Line Locomotives at Bombardier, said: “We thank the FOT, SBB Infra and BLS Cargo for the constructive teamwork that will enable our TRAXX locomotives to operate reliably and efficiently in the Gotthard Base Tunnel. We are now continuing to see that the implementation of our latest software progresses well on the many locomotives in operation, so that our customers benefit from this updated version.”

A state transport summit this month in Berlin saw ministers from several regions, including North-Rhine Westphalia, Hesse, Baden and Brandenburg, calling for the length of freight trains to be on a par with their European neighbours. Currently only 11 per cent of the country’s freight trains are the standard EU length, and solving this problem would involve lengthening some line loops and easing network bottlenecks often found close to major rail hubs.

Major rail hubs

Winfried Hermann, transport minister for Baden-Wurttemberg, said Switzerland was following the same goals and upgrading both its corridors and the Gotthard Tunnel. “The German government should use the legislation on federal rail infrastructure construction to ensure that the network can upgraded for more freight transport, as well as improved electrification and other modernisation measures,” he added.

He had support from Sebastian Putz of Saxony-Anhalt, who said: “In the eastern German states, there is still a considerable backlog of rail infrastructure requirements. For example, passing loops that are too short restrict rail freight transport, which forces many trains to be shorter than otherwise necessary. “The upcoming leglisation on federal rail infrastructure construction could put Germany on course this year to making the necessary upgrades to its infrastructure.”

Longer freight trains

DB Cargo, SBB Cargo International, the Havelland Railway and Port of Hamburg Railways are among key operators hoping for a double-digit increase in efficiency.

More than two thirds of freight trains operating on Deutsche Bahn’s network are shorter than 600 metres, and since 2006 operating companies and DB Netz AG, which operates around 87 per cent of the German network, have been working to upgrade the infrastructure to enable longer freight trains to operate.