MSC’s rail freight business Medway will repair a wagon maintenance site in Entroncamento, Portugal, after storms damaged it at the beginning of the year, worsening working conditions. At the same time, the company is waiting for authorisation to build a new facility in the same location under a €45 million investment.
Currently, the wagon workshop used by Medway is owned by Comboios de Portugal (CP), which left the freight business in the beginning of the 2016 following the opening of the market to private players. Despite that, “Medway will fully support the investment” for the repairs, which will “entirely revert to CP” when MSC’s unit leaves the site to enter their new one.
Cracks in the roof
Two weeks ago, a local newspaper published photos of the condition of Medway’s workshop in Entroncamento, showing cracks in the roof and seepage on the walls. Questioned by RailFreight.com, a Medway representative recognised that the “need to carry out interventions was greatly heightened by the series of storms” that hit that part of the country in January.
The building is a few decades old, and the impact of bad weather on it is getting worse with time. Thus, the repairs will start “very soon”, under an investment of over €100.000 and will complement the interventions previously executed in the electric system by “certified technicians”. Other workshop departments will also be involved, the company says.
The future site
At the beginning of the year, Medway relaunched the project to build its own repair facility in Entroncamento, by investing over €45 million. This initiative was first announced in 2020, before the Covid-19 pandemic. The construction “will start soon, depending on the required permits”.
The option of moving Medway’s wagon unit to another building during the repairs of the old facility and the construction of the new one was not considered. “That would only be reasonable if we had to return the unit to CP before finishing the construction of the new facilities”, adds a Medway’s official.