EU – Baltic States, Railways, Transport

In a special FT supplement on rail industry, Robert Wright, FT Transport correspondent has acknowledged the dreadful railway system Europe had inherited from the previous decades. Thus, during last 50 years freight trains crossing the borders would stay for hours on one border while locomotives changed hands. The main reason behind was the European states’ monopoly on national railways and operating systems.  

The insularity of the continent’s state-owned national rail monopolies have been the stabling block for other problems as well. Thus, each country developed its own electrification and signaling system, partially to reduce the risk of neighbours’ rolling stock being used to support a future military invasion, mentioned R. Wright.

The “national strategy” also safeguarded each country’s rail monopoly from neighbours’ potential competition. However, it significantly reduced rail’s competitiveness against other modes of transport, especially after most internal European border controls were removed and trucks were able to cross the EU borders without stopping.

Recent EU members’ measures were aimed to “regulate technical progress” and improve rail’s competitiveness. As a result, many modern freight trains can now transgress the borders more like the trucks; they often stop only briefly to pick up a new crew, or not at all.

Legislatory changes

The positive effect for railways occurred partly due to the EU legislation that, since 2003, has given private companies the right to compete on rail traffic across European frontiers, challenging the traditional operating methods of the state monopolies.

However, it also stems from the technical side: locomotive manufacturers successfully and substantially improved the quality and range of locomotives available for operating on the member states’ signaling and electrification systems. Demand for such cross-border locomotives has boomed. Bombardier Transportation sold 359 Traxx multi-system locomotives last year, in a market that barely existed 10 years ago.

Some opinions

Jean Marc Tessier, head of the project at France’s Alstom, to develop its newly-unveiled multi-system locomotive, the Prima II, estimates that, in future, 80% of all electric locomotive orders in Europe will require some kind of multi-system capability.

Around half the demand for the locomotives is from new private operators. Heiko Fischer, chief executive of VTG, a wagon-leasing business and a close observer of rail freight developments, says the change is a sign of the new attractiveness of rail freight in Europe. He adds: “Previously, cross-border transport was hampered by a number of factors, e.g. the non-availability of multi-system locomotives. Now we have more locomotive producers offering locomotives for many different national systems”.

“Germany is the most liberal market in Europe but also one of the biggest markets for locomotives,” Mr Vitins marketing director at Bombardier says. “Previously, all the locomotives we have sold to leasing companies have German equipment included. That way, there’s very little risk in buying these locomotives.”

The technology side

The technology behind the locomotives’ electrification systems is simple. Most electric locomotives require a transformer to change the overhead power supply into a suitable voltage for running the motors. Locomotives running off an alternating current power supply also normally use a rectifier to change the supply into direct current. In multi-system locomotives, transformers and rectifiers are built to be adjustable to accept different voltages and frequencies of electricity and still turn them into the same ultimate DC power supply – of 2,800 volts in Bombardier’s Traxx, the market’s most successful product. Complex electronics then change the supply back into alternating current, varying the level of current and frequency to control the speed and power of the locomotive’s traction motors.

Different systems

Signal control equipment is generally a bigger challenge. Most European countries use one of four voltages in their overhead electrification, or catenary, systems. Nearly every country, however, has at least one unique signaling system, if not two, which locomotives need separate safety equipment to use. That raises problems of electrical interference between the mass of different systems fitted to locomotives running in several countries – and also simply of space.

Marketing director at Bombardier says that the company has been asked to fit as many as 24 separate antennae for picking up information from signaling equipment to one Traxx locomotive. Each configuration of the locomotive also needs to be cleared as safe by the countries where it will run – a process known as homologation. The original challenge was to make a locomotive running under the four catenary’s voltages; today the question is putting in different safety systems for cross-border operations.

Locomotives equipped only for DC electrification systems – the 1,500 volts and 3,000 volts used respectively in the Netherlands and Belgium – or AC systems – Germany’s 15,000 volts and France’s 25,000; they are cheaper than other models. It is important to devise locomotives whose basic design can be easily adapted to carry as little or as much equipment as needed. Operators say that making a multi-system locomotive and adding all the equipment to run in different countries increases the price of the locomotive and reduces at the same time their competitiveness against the truck market.

As an example of changes in the European railways, some buyers purchase locomotives with more systems than strictly necessary to protect their resale value or increase the potential for future leases. While a single-system locomotive can operate in only one country, a leasing company or private freight operator has a wider choice of new customers or second-hand buyers for a multi-system locomotive. Such new attitude is much better than buying locomotives directly, operate them for life and then scrap them.