Anyone who has ever traveled across Germany on a freight train knows that rail freight transport is an industry that is still very archaic. The wagons are coupled by hand, a wagon master has to inspect each wagon before departure, if a train is reassembled or another locomotive is clamped in front of the wagons, an extensive brake test has to be carried out. To do this, an employee walks the train several times. All of this still works as it did 100 years ago on the railroad. It is complex, time-consuming – and even more money. But if the Deutsche Bahn (DB) and Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer (CSU) have their way, that should change drastically in the coming years. “We still have intelligence in front of the computer,” says Sigrid Nikutta, head of the DB Cargo freight division. Rail freight transport is to become more digital in the future.
To do this, Deutsche Bahn wants to upgrade its nine large marshalling yards across Germany with a lot of additional technology. For example, an automatic, almost autonomous push-pull locomotive, equipped with numerous sensors to recognize the surroundings, will push the wagons onto the so-called drainage hill in the future. From there they are – the principle has also been known for 100 years – using gravity and countless switches distributed on tracks and put together to form new trains.
The railway relies on artificial intelligence
In the future, the time-consuming inspection of the individual wagons by the wagon masters will be carried out by cameras installed on a camera bridge. According to Deutsche Bahn’s plans, artificial intelligence, i.e. self-learning software, is to take over this in the future; the wagons themselves should be equipped in such a way that the brake test can be taken by an employee at the start or end of the train – without having to do this at up to 740 meters long train up and down several times. And last but not least, an automatic, also digitally upgraded coupling should replace manual coupling. A corresponding research project has been running since last year; However, it is unclear who will pay for the retrofitting of the 500,000 or so freight wagons from all railways across Europe. Experts estimate the cost of this at six to eight billion euros.
The other components, such as the automated trigger locomotive or the camera bridge for faster inspection of the wagons, will now first be tested by the railway at the Munich-North marshalling yard. If the technology proves itself, it could also be used on other shunting systems in the future. Nikutta calculates that this could increase capacities by up to 40 percent.
The bottom line is that all of these measures should make rail freight transport more economical and attractive. So far, it has mainly been the complex single wagon traffic, in which individual wagons are picked up from industrial or service companies, assembled into trains at marshalling yards with their piles of waste, then driven across Germany or Europe and then broken down into individual wagons or groups of wagons at the destination and brought to the customer – this single wagon traffic is time-consuming and costly. With the automation of operations, the railway hopes to become cheaper and thus more competitive compared to trucks. “That can give a boost in the right direction,” says Martin Bulheller from the Federal Association of Freight Transport, Logistics and Waste Management (BGL).
In order to achieve the climate targets, the railway must be strengthened
However, the cargo subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn is still making three-digit million losses every year. If things continue like this, industry experts fear, DB could at some point completely stop business with single wagons, close its marshalling yards and thus withdraw from the area. Then – as in some other European countries – there would only be so-called “block trains” between large industrial sites and trains in combined transport, i.e. loaded with containers, swap bodies and semi-trailers that can be quickly reloaded from wagons to trucks in terminals.
From an environmental point of view, however, such a development would be disastrous. Because in order to achieve the ambitious climate targets, the transport sector has to massively reduce CO₂ emissions. “That is only possible if more traffic is shifted from the road to the rail,” says Cargo boss Sigrid Nikutta. The federal government has also set the goal of increasing the share of rail in total freight transport from 18 to 19 percent at present to 25 percent by 2030. Nikutta therefore wants to bring “more goods into the system”, as she says, so getting more companies to stop sending their goods by road, but by rail.
DB Cargo boss Sigrid Nikutta.
(Photo: Johannes Simon)
For months she has been touring from event to event and has been promoting the railways to shippers, especially the system of individual wagons, which she describes as the “backbone” of rail freight transport. She is also trying to motivate her cargo workforce, which has been partially demoralized after years of “shrinking”. And it has only recently forged an alliance with a dozen smaller rail operators to strengthen single-wagon traffic.
Why are collaborations only coming now?
In this alliance, the companies want to cooperate more closely in the future and also look for solutions if, for example, a small medium-sized company only wants to send one or two freight wagons on a journey – and that at relatively irregular intervals. DB Cargo is now pursuing “a new approach”, says Peter Westenberger from the European Railways Network (NEE), an amalgamation of several DB competitors in rail freight transport. A “fair treatment” and a “common approach” are now the focus in order to get more goods on the rails together. The traffic researcher Christian Böttger from the University of Technology and Economics in Berlin is skeptical whether the calculation will work. Cooperation is always good, he says. The question remains, however, why this has not happened long ago. “Single wagon traffic has fundamental problems, and I don’t think that can be solved by itself.”
Freight trains are ready for departure in Hamburg. Network capacities must be expanded so that more goods can be transported by rail.
(Photo: Daniel Reinhardt / dpa)
Association representative Westenberger and Cargo boss Nikutta also admit that more efficient and flexible handling of rail transports and better addressing of possible shippers alone will hardly bring more goods from the road to the rail. “The political framework also has to change,” says Westenberger. As before, trucks are given preferential treatment by the legislature, for example through advantages in terms of diesel taxation. And while the truck now pays tolls on motorways and some federal highways, access to almost every industrial area is available free of charge. This is different with the railways: If a company wants to set up a siding there so that freight wagons can go directly to the company premises, either the company itself or a rail operator must pay the costs. The number of sidings has therefore steadily decreased in recent years, but the number of trucks on the motorways has grown and grown.
The network as a whole has to grow
In the meantime, however, there is a rethink here too. Among other things, the federal government has launched a funding program to reactivate or build new sidings. But even if more goods are brought onto the railways, the rail network itself is also largely at the limit. In particular, “the racetracks on the rails are already pretty full,” says BGL spokesman Martin Bulheller. Meanwhile, things are also tight at many large railway hubs – especially since it is the declared goal of the Federal Government to get significantly more people off the road and onto the rails, also for reasons of climate protection.
From the point of view of many experts, investments in additional track systems are therefore urgently needed, and the railway also wants to create additional capacity by digitizing its existing network – although these efforts have recently stalled again due to rising costs. And last but not least, many small individual measures are necessary in the rail network in order to allow longer freight trains to run – that too would increase efficiency and bring the freight railways cost advantages in competition with trucks.