Lorry-Rail is a

rolling highway In rail transportation, a rolling highway or rolling road is a form of combined transport involving the conveying of road trucks by rail, referred to as Ro-La trains. The concept is a form of piggyback transportation. The technical challen ...

operator. Its mission consists of developing, promoting and marketing the new 1050 km rail-road service from

Bettembourg Bettembourg ( lb, Beetebuerg , german: Bettemburg) is a commune and town in southern Luxembourg. It is part of the canton of Esch-sur-Alzette, which is part of the district of Luxembourg. , the town of Bettembourg, which lies in the east of the ...

Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small land ...

le Boulou Le Boulou (; ca, El Voló ) is a commune in the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France. It is situated 12 km from the Spanish border. Geography Localisation The town of Le Boulou is located in the canton of Vallespir-Alb ...

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 France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan ar ...

, for standard unaccompanied

semi-trailer A semi-trailer is a trailer without a front axle. In the United States, the term is also used to refer to the combination of a truck and a semi-trailer; a tractor-trailer. A large proportion of a semi-trailer's weight is supported by a trac ...

s. It uses Modalohr piggyback wagons.

History

It opened in March 2007. Traction is provided by the SNCF. 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 SNCF and

Chemins de Fer Luxembourgeois The Chemins Company is a dietary supplement manufacturer based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The company, founded in 1974 by James Cameron, became embroiled in a series of criminal investigations in 1994 after a woman died and more than 100 other ...

(CFL), and

Lohr Industrie Lohr Industrie is a French manufacturer. With a track record in the manufacture of high-tech car transporter systems (primarily for road haulage), this manufacturer has developed the Translohr tram cars and Modalohr road/rail transfer system, an ...

, who provided the wagons. The wagons are special lowered wagons made by

Modalohr The Lohr Railway System or Modalohr System (french: Système Modalohr) uses special railway wagons of a type known as piggyback wagons, to carry standard road semi-trailers on the European rail network.Alpine rolling highway The Alpine rolling highway (french: autoroute ferroviaire alpine (AFA)) is a combined transport service, in the form of a rolling highway on special wagons traveling a distance of 175 km between France and Italy by the Mont Cenis Tunnel (aka ...

. 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

near

. 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 Lille ( , ; nl, Rijsel ; pcd, Lile; vls, Rysel) is a city in the northern part of France, in French Flanders. On the river Deûle, near France's border with Belgium, it is the capital of the Hauts-de-France region, the prefecture of the Nord ...

and

Irun Irun ( es, Irún, eu, Irun) is a town of the Bidasoaldea region in the province of Gipuzkoa in the Basque Autonomous Community, Spain. History It lies on the foundations of the ancient Oiasso, cited as a Roman-Vasconic town. During the Span ...

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