Alpine railways


Swiss oper short-h


As a small, mountainous country with numerous restrictions on lorry movements, Switzerland depends heavily on rail for domestic freight. Anitra Green looks at the special concepts that have emerged to optimise short-distance railfreight operations.


24 T


HE Co-op group is one of Switzerland’s largest supermarket chains, and its lorries operate over hundreds of kilometres of the country’s busiest roads each day delivering goods to its stores. Now it is investing in its biggest project ever, for baked goods, which will increase volumes even more. But rather than simply inflicting more trucks on Swiss roads, the Co-op decided to transfer more freight to rail. This is being done step by step, and


11 routes had been chosen up to August. For example, Co-op supplies are being


trucked from its distribution centre at Wangen to a RailCare hub at Härkingen taken by rail to another RailCare hub at Daillens, and then trucked out to stores from Daillens. On the return trip, pasta from Pasta Gala is taken by road from Morges to Daillens, railed to Härkingen and then trucked to Wangen. RailCare was set up in 2009 to


provide fast intermodal links on local railways all over the country. Although RailCare was taken over by Co-op in 2010, it does not work exclusively for Co-op but has other customers too. It has nine hubs and runs several trains a day


IRJ October 2012


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