The Hamburg Port Authority (HPA) has officially started work on the new railway service centre of the Hafenbahn (Railway Infrastructure) on April 24, with a symbolic groundbreaking ceremony. As part of the Alte Süderelbe port station, a modern service complex with locomotive parking areas, a workshop, a petrol station as well as office and social rooms is being built at the address Dradenauer Deichweg. The aim of the infrastructure project is to avoid unnecessary empty runs of locomotives. This shall relieve the rail network and the environment.
About 200 trains on average are leaving or arriving at the port of Hamburg per working day. This includes several trips of single-haul locomotives to social and maintenance facilities outside the port. These empty runs are also using the already heavily used rail sections between the port and the Hamburg region. Perspectively, rail transport will increase. With the new locomotive service centre HPA wants to significantly reduce the number of empty runs of locomotives.
The facility offers parking spaces for 32 locomotives, and can be compared to a car parking garage. Its core is a 80-by-75-meters-wide sliding-platform system allowing to move the rail vehicles to their parking position.
The locomotive service centre is available to all 135 railway companies using the rail network of the Hamburg Hafenbahn. In addition to these storage areas, a two-track locomotive workshop is being built, and operated by ajax Loktechnik. In addition, office space, which can be used by the railway enterprises for rail car disposition and train handling, as well as resting and social rooms for the drivers and the shunting operators will be created. In addition, diesel locomotives can be fuelled there. The service centre is scheduled to start service at the end of 2017, and locomotives are expected to be available from spring 2018.
“The construction of the locomotive service centre will further strengthen the network capacity of the Hafenbahn. The HPA is thus making an important contribution to further boosting the attractiveness of railway enterprises in the port of Hamburg,” said Tino Klemm, Chief Financial Officer and Member of the Management Board HPA.At the same time, this system saves the environment sustainably, as many locomotive trips can be avoided. ”
The new locomotive workshop in the port of Hamburg also promotes the attractiveness of the business site. “This can be achieved by a fast, flexible and high-quality repair on site, which increases the availability of the locomotives and reduces the costs for the railway companies,” explains Maja Halver, Managing Director ajax Loktechnik GmbH & Co. KG.
The new locomotive centre: facts and figures
Locomotive parking slots: 34 (32 on the sliding platform, 2 separate)
Dimensions of the sliding platform: 80 x 25 meters
Dimensions of the sliding platform: 5 x 25 meters
Diesel fuel station: 100,000 litres of capacity
Track length: 1,940 meters
Railings: 35 (with bumpers)
Sanding system for locomotives: silo tower with 25 cubic meters of brake sand
Number of switches: 11 (electrical)
Number of signals: 10
Track ballast: 4,000 tonnes
Earth moving required for new construction: 50,000 tonnes
The locomotive workshop, operated by ajax Loktechnik has two 25-meters-long workshop tracks each, a siding (25 meters) as well as a ceiling trolley with a load capacity of 10 tonnes. Total area of the workshop: 32 meters long, 25 meters wide, 12 meters high.
