Railway in Poland: New rail4chem and Rail Polska Car-Carrying Train Operating Between Belgium and Poland

On May 3rd 2006, rail4chem started a new regular block train service for transporting cars between Belgium and Poland. In Poland rail4chem relies on a private-sector rail company Rail Polska. Both partners plan to run approx. 80 more trains until the end of 2006.

The Customer is Horst Mosolf GmbH & Co. KG, a large German logistics company specializing in transporting cars. The trains run from Zeebrügge via the Netherlands and Germany to Mszczonow near Warsaw. This is where the cars are loaded onto lorries.

The first train consisted of 22 car platforms with approximately 200 Toyota cars.
From the German-Polish boarder crossing in Guben to Mszczonow the wagons are hauled by Rail Polska's M62 modernised locomotive with GE engine. It is intended to provide non-stop haulage with one locomotive over the entire route as soon as possible.

Closed round trips are offered alternately once and twice a week. Technical responsibility for the train service in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany is borne by rail4chem and the Dutch subsidiary rail4chem Benelux B.V.

Rail4chem deploys heavy diesel locomotives for the service in the Benelux countries and hauls the trains in Germany with its own electric units. The transport time is currently about 30 hours.

"The new car transport service represents another important step towards our establishment of pan-European links," comments rail4chem's managing director Matthias Raith. It is planned to expand the services in future. In particular, the trains are also to achieve optimal capacity utilisation westbound.

Rail4chem group provides transport services to Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, France, Hungary and Slovakia in cooperation with partners. It chalked up more than 3.6 billion tonne km along with its partners in Europe in 2005.

In 2003 rail4chem together with another Polish private operator Chem Trans Logistic Holding Polska S.A. (CTL) run the first private rail freight service between Germany and Poland. The joint block train transported oil products from Leuna to a destination in Upper Silesia.
Source:rail4chem, Railway Market magazine