Unimat Junior 08-8 tamping machine in use for extensive track installations at the Linz harbour
Austria’s main overseas port is situated at the Adriatic Sea, even though Austria, as a land-locked country, does not have any coastal territory. In overseas trade, most goods arrive in Austria or leave the country via the Slovenian port of Koper, located directly next to the Italian city of Trieste in the north-eastern corner of the Adriatic.
Koper: direct connections to Austria
The close relationship between Austria and Koper is rooted in the eventful European history and is defined by geographical proximity and a period of belonging to the same political territory: After 1815, Koper (Capodistria) was situated in the "Austrian Littoral".
Rail traffic covers the comparably short distance between Vienna, Salzburg, or Styria, and the Mediterranean near Koper. In 1967, the city became directly accessible by railway. Nowadays, trains travel up to ten times from the Port of Koper to Graz, four times to Linz, and – on average – twice to other Austrian freight stations every week. New connections to Enns and Salzburg were added at the beginning of 2020. Rail-bound freight traffic between Koper and Austria reached an impressive modal split of 75% while the number of container transports increased six-fold over the course of 10 years.
New tracks for “Containers & Cars”
The port of Koper is a central point in the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) where the "Baltic-Adriatic Corridor" (Świnoujście/Gdyna – Vienna – Graz – Koper/Ravenna) and the "Mediterranean Corridor" (Sevilla – Barcelona – Turin – Budapest) intersect. During normal operations, 80 to 90 freight trains arrive at the port of Koper and its various terminals every week. Every day, Koper counts 12 to 13 container or car train arrivals and departures alone, since half of Koper’s cargo handling volume falls into the category of "Container & Cars".
In 2019, the number of containers handled almost reached the magic limit of 1 million TEU* while the number of loaded motor vehicles exceeded 700,000. The port company Luka Koper has invested substantially in the infrastructure particularly for handling these main transhipment goods by expanding the rail network within the port area various times. The ongoing expansion is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2020: perfect timing, as freight quantities are expected to increase again around this time. In the next five years, there are plans to expand the hinterland connection to Divača: a second track will eliminate the current single-track bottleneck.
* Twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) is an internationally standardized unit for counting ISO containers of various sizes.
The port’s track infrastructure is growing
The extended track installations within the port area are already in use. Additional track installations, namely 3.4 km of track, have been available in the area of the expanded car loading and RoRo terminal since the beginning of 2020: Four new parallel tracks allow loading and unloading up to 700 m long trains and reduce both shunting work and the distances to be covered. In total, the rail network within the port area now comprises about 35 km of track and about 125 turnouts. As early as in 2014, the responsible infrastructure and service company Luka Koper INPO acquired a Unimat Junior 08-8 tamping machine for full and spot maintenance of their plain-line tracks and turnouts. The machine has been operated independently by the company ever since. The two-axle machine with a split-head tamping unit and eight tamping tines is perfectly suited for industrial railways and smaller-scale heavy rail networks. The Unimat Junior maintains tracks with a gradient of up to 60 ‰ and with radii down to 100 m.
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