Hector Rail is a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

-based independent train

haulage Haulage is the business of transporting goods by road or rail between suppliers and large consumer outlets, factories, warehouses, or depots. This includes everything humans might wish to move in bulk - from vegetables and other foodstuffs, to cloth ...

provider operating in the European rail transport market, operating 50

locomotives A locomotive or engine is a rail transport vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. If a locomotive is capable of carrying a payload, it is usually rather referred to as a multiple unit, motor coach, railcar or power car; the ...

. The company provides locomotives and drivers to freight customers who need to have whole

unit trains A unit train, also called a block train or a trainload service, is a train in which all cars (wagons) carry the same commodity and are shipped from the same origin to the same destination, without being split up or stored en route. They are disti ...

hauled between two places with a regular

timetable A schedule or a timetable, as a basic time-management tool, consists of a list of times at which possible task (project management), tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place, or of a sequence of events in the chronological order ...

. From start, the majority of the shareholders were the Høegh family from

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...

, through Höegh Capital Partners. In September 2014, the company was sold to EQT Infrastructure II.

History

Hector Rail ran its first train on 12 December 2004, and now operates around 5 million train-km a year in Sweden and Norway. It began operating in

Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark , establish ...

and running trains from Sweden to

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

during January 2008. In 2009 Hector rail started to haul a passenger train, for

Veolia Veolia Environnement S.A., branded as Veolia, is a French transnational company with activities in three main service and utility areas traditionally managed by public authorities – water management, waste management and energy services. It pr ...

. During 2016 Hector Rail took ownership of

GB Railfreight GB Railfreight (GBRf) is a rail freight company in the United Kingdom. As of 2022, it is owned by the global investment company Infracapital. GB Railfreight was established in April 1999 as the rail freight operating subsidiary of the train o ...

after GBRF was purchased by

EQT Partners EQT AB Group is a global investment organization founded in 1994. Its funds invest in private equity, infrastructure, real estate, growth equity, and venture capital in Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific. , EQT's assets under management ...

. Between 2016-2019 Hector Rail operated Blå Tåget between Gothenburg- Stockholm-(

Uppsala Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inhabitants in 2019. Located north of the c ...

). In May 2021 Hector Rail began operating the trains for FlixTrain when they launched their services in Sweden.

Locomotives

The company operates diesel and electrically powered locomotives: * 5 Class T66, ex

Class 66. *3 Class 141, ex ÖBB Class 1012 prototype locomotives (currently out of service due to poor reliablility) * 12 Class 142, ex

ÖBB Class 1142 The Austrian Federal Railways (german: Österreichische Bundesbahnen, formally (lit. "Austrian Federal Railways Holding Stock Company") and formerly the or ''BBÖ''), now commonly known as ÖBB, is the national railway company ...

locomotives, 11 in operation * 8 Class 143, ex

SJ Rc3 SJ or S.J. may refer to: Postnominal * A member of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) Places * Saint John, New Brunswick, a city located in New Brunswick, Canada * San Jose, California, a city located in Northern California, United States * Sout ...

locomotives * 12 Class 241,

Bombardier TRAXX Alstom Traxx (sold as Bombardier TRAXX before 2021) is a modular product platform of mainline diesel-electric and electric locomotives produced originally by Bombardier Transportation and later Alstom, which was built in both freight and passen ...

locomotives * 8 Class 242, Siemens' ES64U2

EuroSprinter The EuroSprinter family of electric locomotives is a modular concept of locomotives for the European market built by Siemens Mobility. The internal Siemens product name is ES 64, with ES for EuroSprinter and the number 64 indicating the 6,400 ...

locomotives *20 Class 243, Siemens Vectron locomotives * 2 Class 441, Siemens' ES64F4

locomotives *4 Class 841,

NOHAB NOHAB (Nydqvist & Holm AB) was a manufacturing company based in the city of Trollhättan, Sweden. History The company was founded by Antenor Nydqvist, Johan Magnus Lidström and Carl Olof Holm in 1847 as ''Trollhättans Mekaniska Verkstad'' as ...

diesel locomotives ex

SJ T43 The SJ Class T43 is a Swedish diesel-electric locomotive originally operated by Swedish State Railways ( sv, Statens Järnvägar, SJ) and later other companies. It was built by NOHAB, Nykvist & Holm (NOHAB) in 1961–63, and equipped with Electro ...

* 3 Class 921, diesel shunting locomotives ex

SJ Z70 SJ or S.J. may refer to: Postnominal * A member of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) Places * Saint John, New Brunswick, a city located in New Brunswick, Canada * San Jose, California, a city located in Northern California, United States * South ...

* 2 Class 941,

Vossloh G 2000 BB The G 2000 BB is a four axle heavy shunting and mainline locomotive, designed by German company Vossloh and built at the former MaK plant in Kiel. At the time of its introduction in 2000 it was the most powerful hydraulic transmission locomotiv ...

diesel locomotives * 2 Class 942, MaK 1205 diesel locomotives The first digit indicates the number of different electrical voltages supported, but 8 for diesel-electric and 9 for diesel-hydraulic. The second digit is the number of axles, hinting the tractive effort. Hector Rail previously owned 6 Class 161, ex

NSB El 15 NSB El 15 is a class of electric locomotives which are now operated by the Norwegian company Grenland Rail. The locomotives were originally built for the Norwegian State Railways (NSB) in 1967 to replace the NSB El 3 and NSB El 4 engines on ...

locomotives, but they were taken out of service in 2019 after deliveries of new Class 243 "Vectron" locomotives and were sold in 2020 to the Norwegian company Grenland Rail.

In Media

The railway was featured in a 2018 episode of Mighty Trains, showing newly-acquired Vectron locomotives hauling lumber from northern Sweden to the Ostrand pulp mill in

Timrå Timrå () is a locality and the seat of Timrå Municipality in Västernorrland County, Sweden with 10,443 inhabitants in 2010. It is located about 13 km north of Sundsvall (a town with a metropolitan area of some 100,000 inhabitants), and c ...

, Sweden.

References

External links

{{commons category, Hector Rail
Hector Rail

Hoegh
Railway companies of Sweden Companies based in Stockholm County