World rail freight news round-up

Hector Rail has launched a weekly service between Parma in Italy and Rolvsøy in Norway under a three-year contract awarded by ColliCare Logistics. ‘It will offer the fastest transit time in the market’, said Ronny Nordmark, Development Manager at ColliCare.

Lineas Intermodal transported more than 25,000 containers in the first nine months of 2017 on its LORO service between the left and right banks if the River Scheldt in Antwerpen. Half were forwarded to an international destination by rail, mainly to Ludwigshafen, Switzerland and Austria, but also to the Czech Republic and Sweden. ‘Rail provides a more reliable solution than road transport here, especially for this short distance’, said Sam Bruynseels, Managing Director, Lineas Intermodal. ‘We see enormous potential for this product, and there is still sufficient capacity for LORO to grow even more. We hope to transport 35 000 containers this year.’

Kansas City Southern has formed a consolidated Health, Safety & Environmental group within the Operations department.

On October 11 Romania’s government announced 10m lei of funding for rolling motorway services.

Spanish infrastructure manager ADIF has awarded a joint venture of Renfe and Portuguese freight operator Medway a five-year contract to operate the freight terminal in Mérida. While the handling of containers and other intermodal units is to be undertaken on a public service basis for third parties, additional services such as storage, repairs and road haulage would be provided on a commercial basis.

Hector Rail has awarded Mgw Service a full-service contract to maintain its locomotive fleet for five years from January 2018.

Russia’s Union of Manufacturers & Users of Railway Rolling Stock, Association of Railway Carriers and the Skolkovo Foundation have agreed to co-operate in the development and implementation of intelligent monitoring systems for wagons.

TrinityRail Asset Management Company acted as advisor and arranger for ECN Capital Corp’s sale of approximately 9 950 leased wagons to Napier Park Global Capital. ‘We will continue to service the leased railcars under the new ownership, maintaining a seamless transition for the underlying lessees and our strategic partners’, said TrinityRail Group President D Stephen Menzies. ‘In addition, we are pleased to become the manager on an additional portfolio of approximately 3 600 leased railcars which were previously managed by ECN Capital, bringing TrinityRail’s owned and managed fleet to approximately 112 000 railcars.’

TX Logistik has increased its Verona–Rostock services to four trains each way per week, and plans to operated six per week from early 2018.

Axleloads on the 210 km Vitåfors–Luleå heavy haul route in Sweden have been increased from 30 to 32.5 tonnes, increasing capacity per iron ore train by 680 tonnes. Work is underway for a similar increase on the route to Narvik.

Source: railwaygazette.com