Mukran – Klaipėda ferry connection

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Mukran – Klaipeda
Mukran – Klaipėda ferry route
Gauge : 1520 mm ( Russian gauge )
Route - straight ahead
 to the Sovetsk – Klaipėda railway line
   
 Klaipėda Draugystė
   
   
 Sassnitz ferry port (until 1998 Mukran ferry port )
Route - straight ahead
 to Stralsund

The Mukran – Klaipėda ferry connection was a ferry line across the Baltic Sea between the Sassnitz district of Mukran in Germany and Klaipėda ( German  Memel ) in Lithuania . After the Sassnitz ferry port was moved to Mukran, it was also referred to as the Sassnitz – Klaipėda ferry connection .

history

Postage stamp of the GDR, 1986
Postage stamp of the USSR, 1986

From the 1950s onwards, the Soviet Union was the GDR's most important trading partner . The rail and maritime connections had reached their capacity limits at the end of the 1970s. There were repeated political unrest in the People's Republic of Poland , which finally led to the imposition of a state of emergency in 1981 . Therefore, the overland route via Poland was viewed as unfavorable both from a military strategic point of view and economically because of the high transit fees required. On June 18, 1982, the joint government commission of the USSR and the GDR therefore decided to set up a rail freight ferry line between the two states. After the final expansion planned for 1990, more than five million tons of goods should be transported annually, which would have corresponded to a daily amount of at least 14,500 tons. The aim was to handle 20 to 30 percent of freight traffic between the two countries in this way. The connection was planned as a pure rail freight ferry, the transport of passenger coaches, road vehicles or passengers was not planned at the time.

As early as the late summer of 1982, work began on the so-called “major construction site of German-Soviet friendship” on the island of Rügen to build a ferry port. For this purpose, the GDR built a marshalling yard and gauge yard, in which the bogies of the wagons were changed from standard gauge to broad gauge and vice versa or the cargo was reloaded. Since the GDR took over the gauging, the freight wagons in Klaipėda were able to move from the ship to the Soviet State Railways network without delay . In addition, the larger vehicles made it possible to transport more goods per ferry trip. The data processing centers at the ferry stations in Mukran and Klaipėda were linked. In this way it was possible to plan the rebuilding and reloading in Mukran in good time and draw up the stowage plans for the ferries.

Two double-decker loading bridges were built in each ferry port in order to load and unload two ferries at the same time. The duration of the loading and unloading process and thus the entire stay in the port should be four hours per ship. Up to 1250 wagons should be processed per day once they are fully operational. The GDR took over the construction of the six planned ferries of the type EFG-321 , which were manufactured at the Mathias Thesen shipyard in Wismar . Three of the ferries were to be managed by VEB Deutfracht / Seereederei Rostock (DSR), the other three by the Lithuanian State Shipping Company Klaipėda (LSC). On August 27, 1986, the Mukran, the first ferry, was put into service and on October 2, 1986 the liner service began. Klaipeda and Vilnius followed in 1987, Greifswald in 1988 and Kaunas in 1989 . After the fall of the Wall , the order for the Wismar was canceled in 1990 after even considering building a seventh ferry called German-Soviet Friendship , which was to be jointly managed by DSR and LSC.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the changed economic and political situation in Eastern Europe, the importance of the ferry line also declined. Instead of the planned 112,500 freight wagons, only around 7,000 wagons were handled annually until 2005. As early as the 1990s, the decline in rail traffic forced the operators to convert the ships for vehicle and passenger transport. The ferries were sold, chartered out, renamed or used on other lines.

On May 1, 2004, eight Eastern European countries, including Poland and the three Baltic countries, joined the EU ( EU eastward expansion ); since then, the cross-border movement of goods by land by rail or truck has become easier. DB Cargo has been running container trains between Poland and Lithuania on a regular basis since 2013. Nevertheless, a new ferry line from Sassnitz to Baltijsk and Ust-Luga (Russia) was set up.

From July 1, 2010, the route was operated by DFDS Seaways three times a week, the journey time was around 18 hours. The ferries Vilnius Seaways (formerly Vilnius ) and Kaunas Seaways (formerly Kaunas ) were used on this route. In August 2013, DFDS Seaways announced the discontinuation of the ferry line at the end of September 2013.

Cessation of operations (2016)

From July 2014 the Russian Baltic Sea Ferries Group (BFI) started using the Kaunas Seaways ferry between Sassnitz, Copenhagen , Klaipeda, Baltijsk and Ust-Luga. The Petersburg (formerly Mukran ) was in operation from May 2015, but it only called at Sassnitz about once a month. In February 2016 there was a brief increase in the offer to three departures per week. The line has not been served since May 2016, although Mukran Port continues to offer the connection.

Ferries

The Kaunas Seaways from DFDS Seaways
Names IMO number Start of deployment Last use Mu-Kl Passengers Whereabouts
Mukran, Petersburg (1995) 8311883 1986 2016 140 Odeep One : Baltic States
Klaipeda 8311895 1987 2006 190 Aziz Express : Red Sea
Vilnius, Vilnius Seaways (2011) 8311900 1987 2013 120 Sold to UkrFerry (Odessa, Ukraine) in 2018
Greifswald 8311912 1988 1997 120 (95) 2003 sold to UkrFerry (Odessa, Ukraine)
Kaunas, Kaunas Seaways (2012) 8311924 1989 2015 221 Sold to UkrFerry (Odessa, Ukraine) in 2018

literature

  • Fritz Treichel: The freight rail ferry line Mukran – Memel. In: Pomerania. Journal of Culture and History. ISSN  0032-4167 , No. 4, 1988, p. 14f.
  • Wolfgang Klietz: Baltic ferries in the Cold War. Ch. Links Verlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-86153-673-4

Web links

Commons : Mukran Ferry Port  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Horst Zimmermann: Ferry connection Saßnitz-Mukran to Klaipėda. In: Back then in the GDR. Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk , February 23, 2005, accessed on August 29, 2009 .
  2. ^ Andreas Henke: Sassnitz / Mukran - the new gateway to Scandinavia and the Baltic States. In: Fähr-Histories-2. Archived from the original on September 24, 2003 ; accessed on April 11, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Bernd Kuhlmann: Deutsche Reichsbahn secret: poison trains, military transports, secret projects, GeraMond, 2007, ISBN 3-86245-187-9 , p. 22.
  4. ↑ 20 years of the Sassnitz-Klaipėda ferry connection. December 16, 2005, archived from the original on November 14, 2011 ; accessed on August 9, 2018 .
  5. ↑ DB Schenker Rail and Lithuanian Railways expand rail traffic
  6. ↑ DFDS discontinues the Sassnitz-Klaipeda ferry connection. DFDS Seaways, accessed August 31, 2013 .
  7. ↑ Ferry traffic from Sassnitz / Mukran to Russia is booming
  8. ^ Mukran Port: Line services
  9. ↑ OFWSHIPS
  10. ↑ DFDS sells RoPax ferries to Ukrferry