Northwestern Europe has been struck by some unexpectedly harsh winter weather. That is translating into operational problems in two major European ports: Rotterdam and Hamburg.
On Monday 5 January, rail operator METRANS reported that snowfall and subzero temperatures brought all handling operations in the Hamburg port to a standstill. Switches froze and overhead traction lines failed, which meant that various terminals could not accept incoming traffic.
METRANS explained that 20 centimetres of snow prevented the acceptance of containers and made handling them difficult or impossible. “The delays arising during this period will not be easy to recover”, the rail operator said about the disruptions. The other German North Sea ports, Bremerhaven and Wilhelmshaven, were said to be operating without major problems.
Outage in Rotterdam
In the Netherlands, the winter weather has also made an impact on rail operations. All passenger trains were cancelled across the country on Tuesday morning, whereas freight operations seemed to be running without major issues at first. There were some frozen switches here and there, and some landside terminal operations in the Port of Rotterdam were paused on Monday for snow clearing. Operations restarted over the course of the afternoon, the Rotterdam port tells RailFreight.com.
However, the Waalhaven part of the Rotterdam port encountered more serious obstacles on Tuesday morning. The entire port section is currently closed for rail traffic due to failing overhead traction lines, switches and an IT malfunction. Currently, the Waalhaven outage is projected to last until the late morning. “That would limit the impact of the situation, but if it lasts the entire day, then no trains at all will make it into the Waalhaven today”, comments Hupac’s operations director Mark Jansen.
A closure lasting the entire day could have a greater impact and lead to more serious delays. However, the situation is helped by the fact that this early January week is not a busy period in terms of rail freight operations.
Why does winter weather lead to rail chaos?
Infrastructure manager ProRail took the opportunity to explain why winter weather leads to such problems on the Dutch rail network, in contrast to countries such as Switzerland or Norway, which face much more intense winter weather but manage to keep their trains running.
The Netherlands does not often get large amounts of snow or harsh winter temperatures, and has therefore decided not to invest in similar rail heating systems to battle the cold and prevent frozen switches, for example. The Dutch have decided that those couple of days per year are not worth the billions of euros that would be needed to keep the rail network stable during that timeframe, ProRail says.