Alpine railways
ContainerMover 3000 is a system for transferring containers between road and rail vehicles horizontally.
Zermatt there’s another rail link to Gornergrat. We carry about 85,000 tonnes of goods a year to Zermatt, and about a quarter is mineral oil. It’s proving to be a very successful concept.” At the eastern end of the country in Graubunden, the narrow-gauge Rhaetian Railway (RhB) is in a unique position. The whole of this canton is mountainous, and sometimes in winter the only access is by rail. RhB’s freight arm carries 750,000 tonnes per year using 460 wagons and serving 37 freight yards. “One of our special features is that we operate mixed trains - a Co-op wagon coupled to a passenger train, for example,” says Mr Mattias Tscharner, head of freight at RhB. “Also we have a higher proportion of intermodal traffic than most. One of our customers, Aldi, always used road
transport, but when they saw the mountains, they realised intermodal was the only way.” In this terrain, intermodal transport is economical over surprisingly short distances; the longest route, from Landquart to Samedan, is 96km and the shortest, from Arosa to Chur, a mere 26km. “This route is also the best earner,” smiles Tscharner. RhB’s intermodal success story started in 1992 with a working group studying the possibility of transporting foodstuffs in swap-bodies, and was quickly followed by trial runs. A big leap forward was achieved in 1999 with the opening of a new handling centre in Landquart and the Vereina tunnel, leading to new services for both the Co-op and the Post Office. In 2000, RhB opened Europe’s highest intermodal terminal in Samedan at 1700m.
RhB has increased the flexibility of its freight operations by running mixed trains. Photo: Robin Ralston
On the import/export front, SBB
Cargo is planning two major projects which together will form the gateway to Switzerland for long-haul intermodal traffic from all over Europe. Planning permission for Gateway Limmattal, near Zurich, is being submitted this autumn. It will be built on the edge of an existing marshalling yard and will serve as the country’s main distribution centre from 2017. As Mr Daniel Bürgy, project leader for intermodal traffic at SBB Cargo, points out “2000 containers a day arrive in Switzerland from northern European ports, and this is expected to triple by 2030.”
In parallel is the development of Basle
Nord tri-modal terminal at Switzerland’s only port, which will also be the gateway for northwest Switzerland. The work will be carried out in two stages, with road/rail facilities complete by 2015 and the tri-modal installations, including a new basin for barge traffic, opening three years later. There are still problems, however. One question raised time and again is the absolute priority given to passenger trains on Switzerland’s densely-used network. As Wettstein points out with regard to Alpin Cargo: “About 80% of Zermatt’s revenue comes from tourists, so priority for passenger trains is important. But we need another approach.” This view is expressed by many involved in the railfreight sector who resent having to delay a long-haul freight train for a frequent urban service. Another question is whether it makes sense to integrate domestic intermodal traffic with wagonload freight, as several experts have suggested. Only time will tell whether such views are realistic and translate into action in favour of railfreight. IRJ
26 IRJ October 2012
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