The European trailertrain files

The North American Roadrailer system is fairly well-documented, European versions seem to be lost to history, the only visible record of their existence a number of H0 and N scale models produced by Roco and Märklin.

Trailetrains in general

A trailertrain is an intermodal train consisting of semi-trailers converted into railway cars, usually with the help of special adapter bogies (although early versions of the concept involved trailers with built-in railway wheelsets). You're most likely to know it as "RoadRailer", the name of a system still in use in the United States. But since that is the name of a specific system, it would be somewhat confusing as general term on this page. Therefore I will be using "trailertrain" instead, although that isn't entirely without ambiguity as you will see towards the end of the page.

In the 1980s the success of the RoadRailer system in the US has created a bit of a hype among European railways. There were already a few intermodal solutions (not to mention countless concepts and prototypes, see [2]) trying to redirect freight from increasingly congested roads back onto railways, but trailer-trains offered some unique advantages over already established technologies, mainly that transshipment from road to rail could take place without cranes to lift trailers or containers onto train cars. Trailer-trains also promised to be highly efficient as the trailers would be considerably lighter than the equivalent railroad car and the close coupling between trailers reduces both aerodynamic drag and the length of the train.

RoadRailer Europa

Wabash National acquired the rights to RoadRailer in 1991 and began to capitalise on this interest, creating RoadRailer Europa and getting a version of the RoadRailer system approved by German, French, Danish and Austrian railways within a year[9]. As far as I can tell, this was the most widely used system in Europe, at least by number of trailers and bogies.

Much like the US counterpart, trailers had a short towbar on the front and a corresponding slot on the rear[5]. The adapter bogies connected to the underside of the trailers at the rear end. At the front and rear of a trailer-train special bogies with buffer and chain couplers allowed other railway cars or locomotives to be coupled. This system used a variant of the ubiquitous Y25 bogie equipped with self-contained continuous brakes.[10]

Bayerische Trailerzug Gesellschaft

Bayerische Trailerzug Gesellschaft was created in 1991 for the express purpose of operating trailer-trains[5]. Starting with 150 trailers and 78 bogies[23], regular operation began in 1995 between Verona and Munich and expanded rather quickly.[5] A Soltau-Verona service followed in 1996 and a terminal in Soltau was opened in 1999.[10] By the end of 2000 the fleet has expanded to 520 semitrailers and 272 bogies,[24] but services stopped in 2002, and the company filed for bankruptcy a year later.

Why BTZ failed

BTZ is by far the most well recorded of the European companies using any trailertrain system and so there is some analysis of the reasons for its failure, some of which highlight the drawbacks of RoadRailer and trailer-trains in general. For example, while they are light and efficient as trains, the trailers were about 970 kg heavier than ordinary semitrailers due to the stiffer frame, reducing their load capacity[3]. Conversely, during railway operations trailers could not easily be uncoupled from each other for shunting. This was well suited for unit trains operated by BTZ, but they had to be split for the steep grades up to the Brenner pass.[4]

Some external factors also contributed to BTZ's demise. Most notably, the German government originally planned to introduce a toll for lorries (LKW-Maut) on motorways before 1993, but it was delayed (eventually beginning in 2004), making railway transport less competitive on cost. Compounding this problem was the pricing policy of DB, which charged rail operators based on how many trucks were loaded rather than train weight.[4]

Other companies using RoadRailer Europa:

SNCF purchased a total of 35 adapter bogies[10] and 30 curtainside trailers [8]through its intermodal subsidiary CNC in 1996, but I have no further information about French RoadRailer operations. Apparently the bogies were sold off and repurposed as spares in 2006[10]

Charterail was a joint venture between British Rail and private investors, started running intermodal trains using piggyback cars in 1991.[8] The company reportedly signed an order for 100 units in 1992 with a prototype unit consisting of three trailers to be delivered in February of that year[9]. Dates supplied with photos make the timelien a bit fuzzy here, but the company went bankrupt in August 1992.

Danish national rail company DSB purchased a demonstration unit consisting of two trailers and three bogies in 1990 as part of a project called TrailerTog in cooperation with Deutche Bahn. The cars were exhibited at a conference in 1992, and test runs took place, but eventually the trailers were only used on road, and the adapter-bogies were scrapped in 1997.[11]

RoadRailer was not the only one to try introducing trailertrains to Europe however

KombiRail / KombiTrailer

Kombirail was created by Ackerman-Fruehauf, Talbot and Remafer,[2] apparently it is a combination of two distinct systems called “KombiTrailer” developed by Ackermann-Fruehauf and “Semirail” developed by Talbot or Remafer[3][4], but the distinction between these systems is unclear. The system was presented (along with RoadRailer Europa) at the Transport '90 expo in Munich. [22]

Unlike RoadRailer, the trailers connected to the adapter bogies on both ends. The trailers had additional kingpins on both front and rear (for a total of 3 per trailer) and the bogies had two fifth wheel couplers and a number of positioning pins to mate with the trailers [12]

Swiss national railway SBB purchased 19 adapter bogies in 1993 [14] and KombiTrailers were used to transport goods for supermarket chain Migros as late as 2000 [13]. These seem to show up in small groups of one or two trailers coupled into wagonload trains rather than the unit train approach used by BTZ.

NSB purchased two end-adapters and a middle adapter along with two trailers.[14]

CODA-E

Stork Alpha Engineering began to develop the CODA-E system in 1985[2], although the idea of such a system was apparently proposed by an NS employee as early as 1972[2]. A prototype was presented in December 1989 during NS150 in Utrecht[2][15].

It seems fairly certain that a train consisting of three trailers was tested by Swedish company SJ in 1990, after which the train (prominently emblazoned with the words “Trailer-Tåg”) returned to the Netherlands, where NS conducted its own trial runs in early 1991.[2] Apparently there was regular service along the Helsingborg-Göteborg-Stockholm line[15] and Dutch road transport company Bunnik reportedly had a shuttle service operating between Gouda and Veendam, but I could not find any specifics about either. CODA-E cedrtainly did not achieve lasting success[15]

Others

I haven't talked much about the US-based RailRunner Inc, which tried to enter the European market in the 2010s, apparently without much success. Maybe I'll do it later.

There are also mentions of a dozen other systems scattered in the sources, but these rarely go beyond listing the most basic information and finding out anything more about these is difficult. Names are often rather generic and sources aren't consistent. :

• Carro Bimodale developed by Breda and Ferrosud in Italy
• Multitrailor developed at TU Warsaw in Poland
• Transtrailer developed by Transfesa in Spain
• Trailer Train developed by York Trailer and Tiger Rail in the UK

A handful of other systems seem to have left little more than patents: Rail Trailer (Sambre et Meuse), Combitrans (Intermotra) or the "3R Intermodal System" (Innotermodal). This is only speculation, but I suspect the abundance of incompatible systems contributed to the failure of the trailertrain concept as companies not already invested in any system would likely.

Acknowledgements