Lorry-Rail is a rolling highway operator. Its mission consists of developing, promoting and marketing the new 1050 km rail-road service from Bettembourg, Luxembourg to le Boulou near

Perpignan Perpignan (, , ; ca, Perpinyà ; es, Perpiñán ; it, Perpignano ) is the prefecture of the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France, in the heart of the plain of Roussillon, at the foot of the Pyrenees a few kilometres from the ...

, France, for standard unaccompanied semi-trailers. It uses Modalohr piggyback wagons.

History

It opened in March 2007. Traction is provided by the

SNCF The Société nationale des chemins de fer français (; abbreviated as SNCF ; French for "National society of French railroads") is France's national state-owned railway company. Founded in 1938, it operates the country's national rail traffi ...

. Marketing the service is performed by a new company, Lorry-Rail, whose main shareholders are the

Caisse des dépôts et consignations The Caisse des dépôts et consignations (CDC; ) is a French public sector financial institution created in 1816, and part of the government institutions under the control of the Parliament. Often described as the "investment arm" of the French ...

(42.6%) and

Vinci Vinci may refer to: Places *Vinci, Tuscany, a ''comune'' in the Province of Florence, Italy *Vinci (Golubac), a community in Braničevo District, Serbia People * Alessandro Vinci (born 1987), Italian footballer *Alessio Vinci (born 1968), Itali ...

Concessions (19.9%), the national rail companies

and Chemins de Fer Luxembourgeois (CFL), and Lohr Industrie, who provided the wagons. The wagons are special lowered wagons made by Modalohr successfully used since 2003 on the France-Italy Alpine rolling highway. Lorry-Rail, in its initial forecasts, plans to invest about 25 million euros for the purchase of cars and the development of the terminal platform of le Boulou. The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg subsidized facilities of the platform Bettembourg near Luxembourg. A grant of € 30 million was allocated by the French Agency for funding of transport infrastructure funding (AFITF) for development works to increase the

loading gauge A loading gauge is a diagram or physical structure that defines the maximum height and width dimensions in railway vehicles and their loads. Their purpose is to ensure that rail vehicles can pass safely through tunnels and under bridges, and ke ...

on the line. It was intended as a first step to run one pair of trains (one in each direction) every night between 6 pm and 6 am. Each train consists of 18 wagons with a capacity of 36 trailers. The cost of transport is estimated at 670 euros per trailer (without driver) and 630 euros per swap. Traffic is estimated at 30,000 trucks per year, or 4% of long-distance traffic in France. The trip from Luxembourg to Perpignan takes 14 and a half hours compared to 17 to 22h by road. In May 2009 a second daily round trip was set up, and a third in April 2010, while traffic reached 3,000 trucks. A fourth daily rotation was developed in December 2010. From May 2011 three round trips per week will be extended to the south of Sweden.''Lorry-Rail étend l'autoroute ferroviaire de l’Espagne jusqu’en Scandinavie''
/ref> A second rolling highway was planned for 2011 on the Atlantic coast between Lille and Irun.

References

External links

Official Site of the operator

Rail transport in Europe {{france-rail-transport-stub fr:Autoroute ferroviaire

History

See also

References

External links