CAPACITY at Kijfhoek freight yard located between Rotterdam and Dordrecht has been severely reduced following damage to the retarder system that slows wagons during hump shunting.
Located on the freight-only Betuwe line between the port of Rotterdam and the German border, Kijfhoek is both the largest yard in the Netherlands and the only hump yard for sorting wagonload freight trains.
Kijfhoek yard covers a total of 50ha. It has 14 arrival tracks, 41 sorting and classification tracks, and 12 stabling tracks.
Flooding of underground equipment rooms that took place on September 15 during upgrade work damaged 126 electric motors, with the result that the automatic hump shunting system will be out of use until at least the second quarter of 2024.
In May 2021 Dutch infrastructure manager ProRail awarded Siemens Mobility a €110m contract to install a fully-automated Trackguard Cargo MSR32 yard management system at Kijfhoek, including maintenance over a period of 15 years.
The project was scheduled to be completed by 2024, with Kijfhoek operating at a minimum of 50% capacity while the upgrade work was in progress.
The damage to the hump system has particularly hit sole user DB Cargo, as there are very few other freight operators still offering wagonload freight service in the Netherlands.
Shunting without passing wagons over the hump for automatic sorting is a more labour-intensive and time-consuming process that also requires additional shunting locomotives.
Although delaying freight operations, ProRail says that shunting on the flat does not increase risk, and that it is working closely with DB Cargo, civil works contractor PCA Strukton and Siemens to coordinate operations and minimise disruption.
The infrastructure manager is also paying compensation to DB Cargo under the general terms and conditions of its track access contract.
