Inter country freight wagons in Europe

[chadbag]

How common is it for things like container cars to travel to other countries.  Ie, see DB Cargo marked in Switzerland (German, not Holland or Polish or other DB Cargo though I suspect those flow freely in the DB system), for example.  Or SBB arked CARGO container cars in Germany.  I am speaking mixed in with the local countries in a consist.  I have a few Austrian flat cars with containers and a couple Swiss SBB ones. I also have an Austrian and a Swiss or two locomotive, but I don't really have enough freight cars to load up a purely national consist.  But I have a ton of DB marked one (Era VI -- current though I also run Era IV and the question would also pertain).  I assume you also see the private HUPAC and other marked cars mixed in?

 

 

[Nick_Burman]

On 2/26/2022 at 5:57 AM, chadbag said:

How common is it for things like container cars to travel to other countries.  Ie, see DB Cargo marked in Switzerland (German, not Holland or Polish or other DB Cargo though I suspect those flow freely in the DB system), for example.  Or SBB arked CARGO container cars in Germany.  I am speaking mixed in with the local countries in a consist.  I have a few Austrian flat cars with containers and a couple Swiss SBB ones. I also have an Austrian and a Swiss or two locomotive, but I don't really have enough freight cars to load up a purely national consist.  But I have a ton of DB marked one (Era VI -- current though I also run Era IV and the question would also pertain).  I assume you also see the private HUPAC and other marked cars mixed in?

 

 

 

A very complex issue, especially after the liberalization of freight services in Europe. I'm unsure about the (former) national freight operators, however the new crop of open-access freight providers resort mostly to using freight cars provided by leasing companies such as VTG and Transwaggon. So, usually, trains operated by these companies tend to formed by cars belonging to a single lessor. Having said that, occasionally some companies are unable to obtain enough cars from a single leasing company and have to resort to using two or more lessors to cover their needs.

 

AFAIK HUPAC uses its own rolling stock, however I would not be surprised if they turn to leasing companies to cover peak shortages.

 

Cheers Nicholas

 

[Yavaris Forge]

Freight traffic in europe is very diverse rolling stock wise. Although I'm writing this from a german perspective I guess it counts more or less for most of continental european railways. Since the privatization of many state railways and the advance of multi-system locomotives, international freight trains are often operated without a loco change at borders. And the different freight operators, which now aren't bound to their national borders anymore operate freight services anywhere it seems profitable to them. For example Swiss SBB Cargo operates container trains from the Netherlands down to Italy, Polish PKP may drive a coal train from Poland to the Ruhr area in western Germany.

This only concerns the locomotives though. As Nicholas pointed out many of the freight cars are in turn provided by leasing companies, so you could see a Wascosa tank car anywhere from France down to Hungary.

You can probably couple most freight cars together without it looking too out of place, but that mostly counts for trains consisting of only one type of car (container, tank, etc). At least in Germany DB Cargo still has a monopole on single car freight operations, so their locomotives would fit best in front of mixed freight trains on a German themed layout at least. 

[chadbag]

Do you get mixed companies in the same train?  Ie, SBB cargo has a few cars that need to be transferred at station X and a DB Cargo is used to get them to the final destination that SBB doesn't serve or didn't have enough to send a whole train to?

 

I mean, we have Rule #1, so I am not that concerned with it, but am interested in trying to make my stuff as "realistic" as possible.  It is expensive and hard to find a whole trains worth of one type / one company.  DB Cargo is the easiest as I have the most of those, but a few ÖBB and SBB and NS and a couple leasing company cars have found their ways to me 🙂

 

Thanks for the responses!

 

[Allegheny1600]

Hi there,

I lived in a quiet corner of SW France in the early 1980s and my local branch line from Marmande to Casteljaloux saw mainly bogie open and flat wagons for wood traffic, from France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Austria and probably even occasional East Europe but I can’t recall definitively.

Subsequent train watching holidays from the 2010s onwards in Belgium, Germany and Czech Republic show that national operators general mixed traffic trains can have wagons from literally the entire UIC network! If you can imagine it, it has likely run together.

Private operators trains tend to be block trains of one or two wagon types and mostly the same company or same umbrella company.

Same applies for national operators block trains too, just one or two wagon types and all the same owner.

To put it int an American context for mixed freight trains, 40% home road vehicles, 40% neighbouring road vehicles and 20% distant road vehicles!

Hope that’s useful,

 John