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Moving containers in Intermodal Terminals?

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  • Member since
    February 2009
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Moving containers in Intermodal Terminals?
Posted by BT CPSO 266 on Monday, April 20, 2009 3:57 PM

When a train arrives at a intermodal Terminal. Do the containers always go to a truck or are the containers switched between trains to? Don't they do that in Europe?

  • Member since
    December 2001
  • From: NW Wisconsin
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Posted by beaulieu on Monday, April 20, 2009 5:15 PM

BT CPSO 266

When a train arrives at a intermodal Terminal. Do the containers always go to a truck or are the containers switched between trains to? Don't they do that in Europe?

 

It is most common for the containers to go from truck to train or the reverse. There are some terminals that will shift containers from one train to another, but it isn't very common. The rebuilt BNSF Intermodal terminal at Memphis has been designed to transfer from one train to another with widespan cranes. In Germany, Deutsche Umschläggesellschaeft Schiene-Strasse and Kombiverkehr AG are building a terminal for that purpose at Linden near Hannover, with the idea of running unsorted Intermodal trains from Bremerhaven, and Hamburg and then sorting the containers from one train to many other trains.

Intercontainer in Europe used to run Intermodal trains from various terminals in the Benelux countries and Northern France to a yard at Metz, France where the Intermodal flatcars were humped into trains for a large number of destinations. The unreliability of SNCF Fret killed the service.

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