By: Claudia Behrend

When the days get shorter and the trees shed their leaves, locomotives have to get ready for winter as well. The same way that road vehicles need winter tyres, railcars depend on sufficient sand, especially between November and March, so that the wheels have enough grip on wet or slippery tracks when braking or setting off. This explains the availability of a sanding plant and 25 cubic metre silo at the Alte Süderelbe station section of the Port of Hamburg. The silo is heated to ensure that the special fire-hardened sand flows freely at all times. It is transported through pipes and filled using compressed air.

Everything Other than a manual process

Drivers proceed to the total of eight filling points – four nozzles respectively on one track for electric locomotives and one track for diesel locomotives – where the process of filling their sandboxes, located above the locomotive’s axles, is relatively quick and convenient. After logging on to the RFID terminal, a pre-assigned chip or four-digit PIN is used to activate the system. “This is a massive step forward compared to the individual stockpiling and manual filling of sandbags we used before”, explains Frauke Paul, who shares the position of sales manager at the port railway with Anna Stribl.

But the sanding facility is just one part of the Hamburg port railway’s locomotive service centre, which went into operation five years ago after a construction period lasting one and a half years. Probably its most notable element is the automatic transfer table with a load capacity of up to 135 tonnes and a usable length of up to 25 metres, which is suitable for transporting all mainline locomotives to the individual stabling areas. There are 32 of these spaces in total, which is equivalent to around a third of all stabling spaces at the port railway. The locomotive service centre operates 24/7. The train driver presses a button to access the transfer table. It then moves automatically to the assigned parking bay in which the traction unit is finally deposited.

There is also a diesel filling station and a locomotive workshop operated by Railpool to repair and overhaul locomotives from almost all series.

Increasing rail traffic depends on an eficient use of space

The investment was prompted by the forecast increase in rail traffic and the associated demands placed on the infrastructure capacities at the Hamburg port railway. “As a port close to the city, we have only limited opportunities to develop new areas to stimulate growth. So everything hinges on our rigorously efficient use of the available space and on our continuous optimisation of operating processes”, explains Paul.

Around 200 trains run to and from the Port of Hamburg on an average working day. And in many cases the locomotives travelled without railcars to common rooms and maintenance facilities outside the port. The optimisation potential was therefore plain to see: “Unladen journeys to and from the port create emissions and place a strain on the junctions of the main transport arteries, where productive goods trains could otherwise run”, the sales manager explains. “The current network capacities can be put to better use if we avoid these journeys.” In turn, this will enable us to shift even more transport from road to the more environmentally friendly rail network in Europe’s largest rail port.

„Around 200 trains
run to and from
the Port of
Hamburg on an
average working day."

Frauke Paul
Head of sales
HPA - Hafenbahn

Germany's first public sector company with kind of transfer table

“Our customers have warmly received the locomotive service centre as a full-service facility. We have also acquired immense productivity and efficiency advantages: and this system only requires half the space, compared to the conventional construction of stabling areas of a comparable size”, says Paul with visible delight, adding: “We are the first public sector company in Germany to have this kind of transfer table.” The individual parking spaces are yet another benefit for train drivers, as they can be parked in place and no longer need to stand in a queue, as is the case at many other facilities. All tracks are equipped with overhead lines for electric locomotives. There are also common rooms available for the train drivers.

The diesel filling station operated by a leaseholder has a 100,000-litre tank with a dispenser and two nozzles, one for locomotives with a locking mechanism that enables rapid refuelling at 250 litres per minute and one for smaller tanks, for example for auxiliary vehicles such as two-way vehicles. Transponders are used for filling. Fast refuelling at 250 litres per minute is also possible. "The refuelling station is also intended to maximise journey reductions caused by locomotives travelling without railcars within the port area”, says Paul to explain the concept. “Our locomotive service centre will make an important contribution to the transport transition”, she concludes.

The Hamburg port railway

The Hamburg port railway has been the backbone of freight transport at the Port of Hamburg since it was put into operation in 1866. As part of the Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), it connects the throughput operations at the port with the European rail network to ensure efficient freight transport between ship and rail. More than 160 railway undertakings (RUs) run on the tracks of the Hamburg port railway. Every working day, they move around 200 goods trains arriving at or departing from the Port of Hamburg with around 5,500 freight wagons. This requires more than 1,000 shunting operations each day.

It is not without reason that Hamburg, with its 300-kilometre rail network, is the largest rail port in Europe: over twelve percent of national rail freight traffic either travels to or departs from Germany's largest all-purpose port in Hamburg, and half of all containers are transported to and from the terminals by rail. In other words: the port railway moves as many boxes as the ports of Rotterdam, Antwerp, Bremerhaven and Wilhelmshaven combined. With ‘trans- PORT rail’, HPA operates a rail traffic management system that acts as a central interface for freight and data transport and is accessible via an API (Application Programming Interface) or a web client. Typical users are the charging points and the RU, which can contract data entry to authorised service providers if required.