As of last night, freight trains are running again along the railway connecting Oslo and Bergen, as Henning Aandal, the CEO of OnRail, told RailFreight.com. Rail access to Bergen was impeded after a derailment in Arna on Friday 22 March 2024. The derailment was a significant thorn in the side for operators active in the…
Author: Marco Raimondi
Last-minute call avoided tragedy in Norwegian train derailment
The dynamic of the recent train derailment in Norway is still unclear. What is currently known is that the train driver and an employee who helped to prepare the train are under investigation. Moreover, a last-minute emergency call saved the day, allowing a passenger train transiting in the same tunnel to stop and avoid a…
First indicative offers for DB Schenker are in
The sale of DB Schenker, the logistics arm of Deutsche Bahn (DB), seems to have entered a new phase. The deadline for submitting indicative, non-binding offers was Tuesday, 26 March, and at least seven interested parties bade. The amount of the offers has not been shared yet, but the value of the company is set…
Accident in Norway: ‘Some cargo will have to wait for the reopening of the line’
There currently is no rail freight traffic between Oslo and Bergen due to the recent derailment in Arna. “Some of the containers will just have to wait for the reopening of the line”, said a spokesperson from CargoNet, the rail freight operator most active on the route. The company usually runs six trains per direction…
DB and GDL strike deal for collective bargaining agreement
Deutsche Bahn (DB) and the German Locomotive Drivers’ Union (GDL) finally sealed the deal on a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA). The CBA will be retroactively implemented from 1 November 2023 and will last until 31 December 2025. One of the main bones of contention between GDL and DB is that the union wanted to…
UPS puts parcels on rail with CargoBeamer
Parcel giant UPS has been testing rail freight transport services between its hubs in Milan, in northern Italy, and Herne, in western Germany. The tests, in cooperation with CargoBeamer, started in October, with two UPS swap bodies loaded on the CargoBeamer trains every day per direction. This seems to be the first time UPS is…
DHL’s cargo tram service in German city gets scrapped
The city of Schwerin, in northeastern Germany, had been experimenting with an urban concept of rail freight by having parcels delivered by trams. After a little over a year, however, these special trams have stopped running due to a lack of demand and vandalism. The service was being carried out by local public transport company…
Derailment in Norway blocks rail access to Bergen indefinitely
A freight train derailed in Arna, near Bergen (Norway) on the evening of Friday 22 March 2024. No serious injuries were reported, but the railway section connecting Bergen to Vaksdal, part of the Bergen-Oslo line, will be closed with no forecast for a reopening date. The Norwegian Accident Investigation Board said that the derailment occurred…
‘Neighbouring infrastructure managers need to work together’
The RailFreight Summit 24 is only one month away. One of the sessions of the event will revolve around the state of the infrastructure to and from Poland. Imad Jenayeh, Senior Business Development Manager at CFL multimodal, will be one of the speakers, and we had a chat with him as a preview of the…
Rail freight across the Alps dropped, but not because of the Gotthard
Freight transport across the Alps in 2023 decreased both when it comes to road and rail, according to the Swiss Federal Office of Transport (FOT). Concerning rail freight, volumes dropped by 5.9 per cent compared to 2022. The FOT stated that the main cause is the general economic situation in Europe, and not the closure…