‘The path to faster rail freight goes through wagon electrification’

The European Union wants longer, heavier and faster freight trains, but there are a number of issues that need to be addressed and solved to reach these goals. A solution proposed by Bruno Dalla Chiara, Full Professor in Transport Systems at the Polytechnic University of Turin, would be to electrify rail freight wagons, similarly to the carriages of passenger trains.
To have freight trains running at higher speeds and carrying more and heavier cargo entails upgrades to the infrastructure but also to the rolling stock. However, rail freight wagons have not significantly evolved throughout the last century. “Freight wagons of the 1950s are not infrequently exactly the same as those of today”, Dalla Chiara explained, “built in steel and with 30-40 years of cumulative operation.”

Each train will need more traction power, which is now all in the hands of the locomotives. “The long and heavy trains required by the EU may result in unavailable power in single or double traction, especially in uphill conditions, overheating of brakes on descent, loss of grip, and breakage of head hooks”, Dalla Chiara pointed out.

‘Such vehicle does not exist’

On the other hand, if the power were to be distributed throughout the train via the wagons, these issues would be solved, he claimed. “Charging times of an air tank – for braking – are significantly shorter and wagons are individually diagnosable (axles, bushings, brake systems) remotely”. This would also facilitate the transport of temperature sensitive cargo on longer routes, since the conditions could be monitored and adjusted in real-time for each wagon.

In reality, however, a rail freight wagon with the ability to generate traction power does not yet exist. Ideally, according to him, new freight trains would be powered through “multiple traction, distributed power, with individual groups of electrified wagons and with electric braking control on the individual wagon”. Moreover, the wagons would be flat to be suitable for intermodal transport.

The professor, however, highlighted that this is not necessarily an insurmountable problem. On the contrary, this could be an opportunity for the rail manufacturing industry to expand their horizons and contribute to national economies. Creating such a train would “renew supply, attract demand and reduce impedance, seriously pandering to the modern logic of sustainability”, he stressed.

Why the Italian experiment failed

The Italian rail freight operator Mercitalia ran a high-speed rail service on behalf of Amazon between 2018 and 2022, called Mercitalia Fast. The train, an ETR 500 usually deployed for passenger transport, linked Marcianise, near Naples, and Bologna in three and a half hours. ‘Borrowing’ a passenger train rather than creating one specifically for freight was done “perhaps to avoid having to think about a next-generation freight train for intermodal transport”, Dalla Chiara underlined.

Another issue was the fact that the Mercitalia Fast service was dedicated to Less-Than-Truckload shipping, which is a rarely profitable segment. “This laziness or lack of courage led to the decline of the initiative, perhaps discouraging other applications”, he added. Perhaps Italy will have a new opportunity to explore high-speed rail freight once the Turin-Lyon highway opens in the 2030s, Dalla Chiara concluded, hopefully with better results.