Rocky Train Ride Smoothly Shipped by WW Ocean

The train ride of a lifetime has just got even better, thanks to the shipping brand new train carriages from Bremerhaven, Germany to Tacoma in the US, from where they are then transported in-land to Canada. In Canada they will be used on the Rocky Mountaineer train from Seattle to the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Four new train carriages have been successfully shipped since last summer out of a total of 10, with the remaining six to be shipped later this year.

And these aren’t just any train carriages. With a length of 27.32m, width of 3.9m, height of 5.25m and weight of 74 tonnes, this is breakbulk that requires a tailored transportation approach. The €7m trains, which feature domed windows for panoramic views of the Canadian landscape, are manufactured by Stadler Rail Group in Berlin – a Swiss company that has been building trains for 75 years.

Fabian Wulferding, WW Ocean Sales Manager in Germany, explains that the journey the rail carriages take from production in Germany through to delivery in Canada is a complicated one. Having been manufactured at the Stadler factory in Berlin, the trains are then transferred through Berlin city centre on pallets by trucks, and transported by barge to Bremerhaven port.

There, they are transferred to custom-built roll trailers – known as ‘Rocky Trailers’ – before being loaded onto WW Ocean’s RoRo vessels. So far, four RoRo vessels have been used: Tiger, Patriot, Faust and Theben. A ship with clearance of 6.5 metres is needed to handle the trains – this takes into account the increased height once placed on roll trailers. Once the vessels arrive in Tacoma, WW Ocean’s specially built discharge ramp is used to move the carriages from roll trailer to ground.

“We designed and manufactured roll trailers especially for this project,” says Fabian.“This is a complex, multi-modal shipment – because these rail carriages are unique globally. The trains really are one-of-a-kind, and WW Ocean was chosen because of our regular sailings and stable transit times. On top of that, RoRo is a much safer way of shipping compared to conventional methods.”

Source WW Ocean

the above photographs courtesy of Wallenius Wilhelmsen

Photograph courtesy of Rocky Mountaineer