RLL Container Report - 11 January 2017
From: John Keir, Ross Learmont Ltd. Email: john.keir@telia.com Date: 11 January 2017
If you go down to Transylvania today, be sure of a big surprise
In true Viking fashion, the Icelanders of Samskip are embarking on another great voyage of discovery. This time, they are heading south-east from their rail base in Duisburg bound for the rolling plains and highlands of Transylvania. Together with their partners, Rail Cargo Group, Samskip is creating a new point-to-point container service linking Turkey with Scandinavia via the magnificent scenery of the land of Dracula.
As a subsidiary of the Austrian railways (ÖBB), Rail Cargo Group plans to operate a new intermodal rail service running from the north to the south of the European continent. The Austro-Icelandic partnership will make use of Rail Cargo Group’s terminal in Curtici, which is conveniently located on the western border of Romania adjacent to Hungary. This will allow the new partnership to offer a regular and reliable rail service in competition with the current truck services on this route.
By making use of Rail Cargo Group’s existing rail services into Turkey and Samskip’s block train shuttles to Scandinavia, the partners are opening up a whole new world of rail intermodal opportunities in Europe. The partners will offer four round-trip services per week, which should mean they can deliver a box from Curtici to Sweden in four to five working days. And just to make sure that everything is indeed running on schedule, I shall pop by Samskip’s Swedish rail hub in Katrineholm to check on arrival times.
Freight rail services in Romania have developed considerably in recent years, with investments ranging from a new international link to Bulgaria across the Danube as part of the Pan-European Corridor IV, and the reconstruction of the line linking Constanta Seaport with Bucharest. The Romanian capital can already boast two rail container terminals, one located to the west and the other to the south of the city. At the same time, CFR SA, the state-owned infrastructure manager plans a Euro 709 million upgrade of rail lines in the Transylvania region of central Romania.
It is not only the freight sector which will benefit from new investment, as the Romanian Rail Reform Authority intends to purchase 100 to 150 multiple units, locomotives and coaches to be delivered by the target date of November 2018. These rolling stock acquisitions will be funded in part by the European Union. The natives of Transylvania will be in for a big surprise as this heavy investment in passenger trains will feature air conditioning and will be capable of speeds of up to 160 km per hour.
Just as the upgraded rail lines will encourage more freight traffic to move from the road to the rail, so visitors from all over Europe can seize the opportunity to hop on a train to Transylvania and Castle Bran, which has long been associated with Dracula and with the real-life Wallachian ruler, Vlad Țepeș (Vlad the Impaler; 1448–1476).
John Keir, Ross Learmont Ltd.
11 January 2017
Copyright ©, 2017, John Keir