New rail shunting facilities at Baltic Container Terminal
11th June 2021
In last days of May the new rail shunting area (in front of BCT’s rail gate) was fully commissioned and put in use. The usable lengths of the all 7 tracks vary from 610m to 780m each making possible to receive full train sets with the maximum train length allowed in Poland (600m and 750m) with no need of splitting. The class of the entire BCT track system was raised up to the highest class and now the axle load limit is 22.5 tons.
The external & internal system of the BCT rail tracks were also equipped with an automatic traffic control system. The installation of automatic drives on turnouts replaced the manual process of switching of turnouts, which significantly accelerates and facilitates the shunting of wagons to and out of BCT.
The modernization of the BCT’s external track system is an element of project "Extension of railway access to the western part of the Port - reconstruction and electrification", carried out by the Port of Gdynia Authority.
The last element of this project is electrification which will allow electric locomotives to enter BCT loading track (up to the railway gantry). This will eliminate the need for a time-consuming and costly process of swapping locomotives at the Gdynia Port station for railway carriers and will be a milestone in improving of efficiency for the entire intermodal transport chain (reducing the total train journey time even by 8 hours in some cases). The launch of electric traction depends on the progress of modernization works at the Gdynia Port station, which is currently scheduled for late 2023.
This infrastructural work involves BCT and Gdynia Port Authority and is related to the area where the COMODALCE rail pilot in Gdynia is still running, so it is very interesting from the project point of view.
.JPG "Gdynia rail")
