Intermodal road-rail innovation ‣ WorldCargo News

Despite the high CO2 emissions from road transport, the door-to-door flexibility of the semi-trailer remains a powerful driving force. According to one industry source, trailers account for around 74% of road freight traffic in Europe. Despite protestations from the road sector, there seems to be no shortage of drivers undertaking long-distance deliveries. The convoy of trailers on any major European highway is a display of international registration marks, graphically demonstrating the willingness for the logistics industry to overcome all those challenges.

Despite the dominance of road transport, a viable alternative exists in the form of intermodal services that carry trailers on rail. The whole concept of intermodal operations, with rail taking the trunk leg, leaves truck drivers closer to their home base and trailers sent securely across the backbone of the journey. That said, rail freight operators have much to do to convince the market. Despite the rosy picture painted by the rail freight sector, it has a long way to go to improve on the mere 2% of truck trailers that are currently transported on the tracks.

Horizontal loading systems

Helrom, one of the manufacturers who are trying to overcome the technological and economic hurdles, are bullish about the prospects for the future. The German company has developed their own horizontal loading system, which they call Megaswing.

Helrom also operates as a turnkey service within the gates of their compounds. “Almost all of the trailers used in Europe cannot be craned and could previously only be transported by freight train at great expense,” says the company. They are keen to open up the market with their technology, but they also acknowledge that there are some significant primary obstacles. “Considerable investments in central loading terminals with long construction times,” Helrom admits. “The technology of the Helrom trailer wagon now offers the possibility of overcoming these barriers sustainably – a decisive prerequisite for realising the turnaround in freight transport.”

At first sight, the Helrom system requires a degree of precision driving to reverse the trailer onto the end-loading pocket wagon. That, though, is a task that Helrom undertakes itself, only asking drivers to drop their trailers and let their tractor operators do the rest. The unloading allows drivers to couple directly to trailers and drive straight off the train.

“The handling is a partial process of our service,” says the Helrom’s Bruno Weissmann, their Director of Sales. “We carry out this process with our own employees and don‘t subcontract them. This means that we are in a position to optimise the throughput times and adapt them to the total transit time. The costs of the handling are included in the total price. Our solution does away with the enormous investment costs of conventional handling systems.”

WorldCargo News reported in October last year that the Bavarian inland ports company, Bayernhafen, intended to deploy Helrom horizontal access trailer wagons to connect Regensburg with Lébény^[1], south of Bratislava in Hungary, starting in April of this year. Helrom has already deployed infrastructure on a Vienna-Düsseldorf route. “Helrom provides a barrier-free loading process for all trailers without expensive loading terminals, cranes or craneable semi-trailers,” said the company. “Helrom sees itself as an alternative to conventional road transportation and offers comparable flexibility and punctuality thanks to its innovative loading technology. Helrom’s operating model ensures reliability that goes far beyond previous rail transport.”

Small but significant numbers

The rolling highway concept may still be a small part of rail cargo operations, and a smaller part still of overall European logistics, but the concept is moving a significant number of trailers. Bayernhafen is hoping to move 17,000 trailers in the first full year of operations between Regensburg and Lébény.

To accommodate the service, Bayernhafen is modifying its Regensburg Trailerport, which caters for swap bodies as well as semi-trailers. “I’m curious to see how the system performs in operation,” said Christian Bernreiter, the Bavarian State Minister for Housing, Building and Transport. “It has the potential to strengthen combined transport, which I very much welcome.”

Horizontal loading, in its simplest form, is probably best typified by the Channel Tunnel “LeShuttle” service, operated by Getlink. The tunnel connects Calais in France with Folkestone in England via the 31-mile (50.5 km) subsea link. The Infrastructure allows semi-trailers to drive onboard via dedicated carrier cars (wagons designed as ramps). Each train conveys more than thirty heavy goods vehicles (HGVs). The service is hugely popular. Getlink operates a fleet of 15 trains, running 24/7.

The success of Getlink’s rolling highway is easily the envy of every other operator in the sector, but the Channel Tunnel operation has significant advantages. The cross-Channel market is booming, and the speed of the service far outstrips the ferry alternatives. Not only that, the trains are built to a bespoke larger cross-section than European mainland freight trains (and are significantly bigger than the historically small British trains). That bigger ‘loading gauge’ allows a level of interoperability that, for mainland operators, requires a degree of ingenuity.

Route availability challenges

Fitting a modern HGV onto Europe’s conventional railways requires a ‘pocket wagon’. This purpose-built rolling stock allows the trailer to sit between the railway wagon axles, placing the trailer as low down, close to the tracks, as possible. Route availability will still be limited. Not all railway loading clearances are uniform, but there is a workable network covering the Continent. Also, the work in progress known as TEN-T, the EU-sponsored Trans-European Transport Network, incorporates this clearance as a standard for future European commerce.

Other operators and manufacturers also have confidence in the horizontal loading concept. Luxembourg-based CFL multimodal is gearing up for the launch this month of a thrice-weekly rolling highway service between their Intermodal Terminal Bettembourg-Dudelange and the Railport Arad terminal in Curtici, Romania. They put the rationale for the service down to a matter of reliability. “This new connection is serving the need to connect Western Europe with Romania in particular, and more generally with the Balkans and Turkey,” said Sven Löffler, the Chief Commercial Officer at CFL Multimodal. “The increasing number of shippers with production sites in Romania, as well as the daily road congestions at the Hungarian-Romanian border, had a great impact on the creation of this new connection.”

Each train will offer a capacity of 40 slots suitable for craneable and non-craneable trailers. CFL has demonstrated that they can load a full train carrying forty trailers in less than an hour. Obviously, CFL recognises the transit time lost in handling at terminals, but over the distances they operate (in this instance a trip of almost 1500km) the train’s higher average speed can readily make up for that.

CFL has opted for the Modalohr horizontal loading system, manufactured by Lohr of Strasbourg. Advocates of horizontal loading systems always emphasise that much or all of the mechanical infrastructure is incorporated into the train itself. For the Modalohr system, a specially built platform is required, which is basically a 740-metre-long railway siding, slotted into the terminal apron, which in turn is shaped to accommodate the thirty-degree swing of the pivoting ‘pockets’ on the specially designed wagons. “Lohr’s rail-road technology has already made it possible to transfer two million trucks from road to rail in 20 years,” says the company. In addition to the Luxembourg – Romania service, Modalohr is the hardware behind several other long-distance routes.

• “Lorry-Rail” over 1040km between Luxembourg (Bettembourg) and Perpignan (Le Boulou)

• “VIIA” over 1470km between Calais and Perpignan (Le Boulou)

• “VIIA” over 1050km between Calais and Turin (Orbassano)

• “VIIA” over 800km between the Port of Sète and Calais

• “CFL” on 1000km between Luxembourg (Bettembourg) and Poznan (Swarzedz)

The whole train swings line abreast, allowing terminal tractors to pull multiple trailers simultaneously onto the train. The typical layout is for at least two parallel sidings, so that road truck drivers can deliver a trailer and hook up to a fresh load for a quick turnaround in the terminal. Unlike the shuttle service on the Eurotunnel route, the trailers are unaccompanied, and the road driver is free to make multiple ‘last mile’ journeys around their home terminal.

Modalohr is also employed on the mountainous “Autostrada Ferroviaria Alpina”, a 175km route between Chambéry (Aiton) and Turin (Orbassano) – which is often an extremely difficult winter drive. The list of rolling highway routes is growing, with reports on worldcargonews.com being posted frequently.

Growth factors

Lohr puts the growth down to the fact that the vast majority of European road trailers are non-cranable. They put the figures at 97% of the 3,000,000 semi-trailers currently operating. “The LOHR system is specially designed for horizontal loading of standard semi-trailers. The LOHR UIC wagon is the only wagon that can carry standard unaccompanied semi-trailers up to 4m high on the French, Spanish, Portuguese and Franco-Italian Alps networks,” says the company.  However, there’s little likelihood of ever seeing a train like that in Britain. The older network in the UK does not meet the loading gauge standards of the UIC (Union Internationale des Chemins de fer). ‘Continental gauge’ trains cannot pass beyond the line connecting the Channel Tunnel to London’s Barking Euroterminal. The restricted clearance on the UK network will not permit a 4m tall rectangular load to pass.

Possibly the most heavily engineered of all designs came from a Swedish company, Flexiwaggon. Their design allowed the wagon to pivot at both ends of the pocket, so truckers could simply drive on and off. However, the high cost and complexity of the engineering may have proved less appealing. WorldCargo News has been unable to reach the company or its executives for this review.

Vertical benefits

The trade-off for horizontal loading pocket designs like Megaswing, Modalohr, or Flexiwaggon, is offsetting the extra trailing deadweight and therefore less cargo weight capacity against the savings in load on – load off handling costs. The advantages are clearly in the human costs avoided in not sending truck drivers on multi-day trips away from home, and the potential for relatively low infrastructure costs at the interchange between road and rail.

Another alternative is to lift trailers and load them into pocket wagons using a crane. NiKRASA has now developed the third generation of its lifting frame for non-cranable trailers. The device was shown at Innotrans in Berlin in September, and it has now been launched onto the market.

NiKRASA was first unveiled by development partners Bayernhafen and TX Logistik around eight years ago. The new design, which is the result of a new collaboration with German trailer manufacturer Wecon, does not require a terminal ramp, and it can be stacked up to five units high. “NiKRASA 3.0 was conceived after a close exchange with both train manufacturers and wagon developers,” TX Logistics stated, which contributes to its wide compatibility with pocket wagon designs. “A key feature of NiKRASA 3.0 is the elimination of the terminal ramp, which in previous versions was required in addition to the lifting cradle for handling. Both components are now merged into one base platform,” explains the company.

The advantages of horizontal loading could equally be portrayed as the reasons for choosing a vertical system like the Nikrasa cradle. The familiarity and dependability of a logistics hub can be more appealing than a trackside ramp. The convenience of a regular trailer drop-off makes sense for both the driver and the customer. However, it does restrict availability to hub-to-hub operations. “Both technologies have their advantages”, said Laurent Erhard, CEO of CFL terminals, who have made provision to accommodate both systems within their business. “With the Nikrasa baskets, you don’t need additional equipment. It can be used everywhere as long as there is a crane or a reach stacker.”

Leasing is the key to adoption

The NiKrasa system has another powerful ally, in the shape of Wascosa. The Swiss rail wagon manufacturer and leasing agent has signed a deal with TX Logistik for further development and commercialisation.

As part of this partnership, Wascosa has placed an initial order for 125 NiKrasa modules, valued at approximately three million euros. “The NiKrasa solution fits perfectly into our market strategy to generate customer value in rail freight logistics and, at the same time, supports the shift to rail,” says Iris Hilb, CEO of Wascosa. “In future, we will offer the handling system as a standard new service for the renting of pocket wagons to make it easier for shippers to enter the world of combined transport.”

The concept of transporting non-craneable trailers is still a marginal activity in the overall European rail freight picture. However, this aspect of intermodal operations is slowly growing. The high cost of specialist horizontal loading rolling stock may be a barrier to entry, but it has not stopped a whole train of manufacturers from bringing their products to market.

Similarly, the flexibility of vertical loading systems may require more handling hardware on the ground, but the ease of use has to be an advantage for customers. The cost advantage of pure road transport may be eroding, but trucking still has a huge slice of the market. If even a small proportion of that were to shift to rail, it would be transformational for the sector.

*This story first appeared in the October print issue of WorldCargo News