Organised by Hefei International Land Port and DB Cargo Eurasia, the first landbridge freight service between Hefei and JadeWeserPort arrived at the Nordfrost terminal near Wilhelmshaven on July 13. Having left the Chinese city on June 25, the inaugural service carried around 100 TEU, mainly conveying household appliances as well as textiles and electrical goods.
United Wagon Co and mineral fertiliser producer Acron Group have signed a strategic co-operation memorandum including an order for 500 Type 19-9549-03 hopper wagons to be supplied from the Tikhvin plant by the end of Q1 2022. The wagons will have a capacity of 120 m3 or 76 tonnes, reducing the unit cost of transport and the fleet size required.
Network Rail and Highways England have published the first phase of the Solent to the Midlands Multimodal Freight Strategy. This found that rail and road have similar reliability in terms of journey times, suggesting that modal shift to rail provides an opportunity to free up road capacity. Rail should be competitive for bulk traffic moving further than 80 km and consumer goods travelling more than 160 km.
The Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking announced on July 16 that it had approved €1·77m in co-funding under its 2021 Call for Proposals for two projects worth €2·34m. The bulk of the money will support work on the development and delivery of the European Digital Automatic Coupler as part of Innovation Programme 5 on rail freight.
As part of its Baltic Sea Bridge network, the Port of Mukran is introducing block train services linking its train ferry terminal with Ulm and Nürnberg. As with its existing trains, the services are to be operated by Eisenbahngesellschaft Potsdam.
The Rail Freight Group has welcomed the UK government’s Transport Decarbonisation Plan, which Director General Maggie Simpson said ‘sets out a clear vision for the decarbonisation of freight transport and recognises the vital role that rail has to play in reducing carbon emissions. We welcome government’s commitment to setting a target for rail freight growth, and to the electrification of strategic gaps in the network, allowing more freight to be electrically hauled.’
Intermodal operator Hupac Group has become a member of the German transport association Deutsche Verkehrsforum. The group now has 23 business units based in Switzerland, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Russia and China, and operates up to 150 trains per day.
Eurasian intermodal co-ordinator New Silkroad Discovery has urged customers to collect consignments from the Duisburg intermodal terminal promptly, in order to minimise the risk of disruption. China State Railway Group operated 7 377 trains in the first half of this year, conveying 707 000 TEU, a year-on-year increase of 43% and 52% respectively. On July 10 CR suspended export traffic through Alashankou for several days due to reported congestion at various European terminals, but NSD said the principal German hub at Duisburg was still fluid, with sufficient slots available.
