Railship AG
The Railship AG is a former Swiss shipping company . It was founded in 1973 in St. Gallen and operated a private rail ferry connection across the Baltic Sea from Travemünde (Schleswig-Holstein) to Hanko in Finland .
Society
As early as 1973, studies were carried out on how the connection between the European rail network and Finland could take place. The greatest difficulty was the different track system, since in Finland trains run on broad gauge tracks. At a distance of around 1000 kilometers, it was the longest rail ferry connection in the world at the time.
The founding members were the forwarding companies Schenker and Kühne & Nagel , Ostmare AG as a Swiss holding company and the shipping companies Effoa from Finland and HM Gehrckens from Hamburg , which had long experience in Finland traffic.
Infrastructure
Since the goods were to be transported without being reloaded onto other railway wagons, extensive preparatory work was necessary. Because of the different track widths, special, relocatable wagons were purchased. In the ports of Travemünde and Hanko, railway ferry docks with appropriate track systems and shunting options were built, and in Hanko a roofed Umachsanlage and a track system with both track widths.
In 1984 the Railship Group with its subsidiaries Railship GmbH & Co. in Travemünde and Oy Railship AB in Helsinki had 341 closed wagons with a payload of up to 52.5 t, 266 open freight wagons with a payload of up to 54.0 t, 202 exchange bogies and 202 wheelsets. The total investment amounted to over 100 million Deutschmarks . The railway ferry Railship I cost around 33 million German marks.
If the ferries weren't full of railway wagons, trailers could also be transported.
development
After initial difficulties, the Railship Group was able to steadily increase its market share, and in 1977 the capacity limit was almost reached. In 1979 the Seebeck shipyard was commissioned to extend the ship by 27 meters. This corresponded to a transport increase of 30 percent. After extensive preparatory work, the renovation was carried out within 20 days. The transport volume rose from 264,000 tons in 1977 to 450,000 tons in 1984. On November 22nd, 1984 the second ship, the Railship II , was put into operation and an additional 200 wagons with the associated exchange bogies and wheel sets were procured. The fleet had grown to 966 vehicles. Four round trips were now carried out weekly, the travel time Travemünde - Hanko was 30 hours. In 1990 the Railship III was put into service. From 1998 the port of Turku was used instead of Hanko .
resolution
At the general assembly on December 23, 2002, the dissolution of Railship AG, based in Zug , was resolved and operations subsequently ceased. The ships were sold, the Railship II went to Russia, the Railship III took over the Finnish shipping company Finland Roro KS and sailed under the name Runner , then it too went to Russia and sailed under the name Ambal . The liquidation was completed in June 2004 and the company was deleted from the commercial register at the end of June 2004 .
literature
- MaK Toplaterne booklets 53 and 55
Individual evidence
- ↑ Entry of the former "Railship AG" in the commercial register of the canton of Zug ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
