Six years after it was launched, the first long distance (1000 kms) service between Bettembourg in Luxembourg and Le Boulou next to the Spanish border on the Mediterranean side of the Pyrenees can be counted a success story. In the past few years traffic has risen steadily and last year 56,000 trailers were transported with the Modalohr horizontal access wagons, and traffic in the first half of 2013 was up another 9%.

Geodis, the affiliate of SNCF that controls the operator, Lorry-Rail, has now dediced to extend the service to Calais. From 2015, two daily services will run between the French seaport and Bettembourg. The service will tap into UK origin/destination traffic and the new terminal will be located close to the Eurotunnel terminal at Calais-Fréthun. An order for another 105 Modalohr twins was placed earlier this month.

From 2016 another service will operate between Lille-Dourges 90 kms southeast of Calais and Tarnos in the Landes, close to Bayonne and the Spanish border on the Atlantic side of the Pyrenees. Lorry-Rail will also operate this service and a regime of four daily pairs with a capacity for 480 trailers/day is envisaged. A further 278 Modalohr twins have been ordered from Lohr Industrie accordingly.

These new trains will also be the first in France authorised to run with a total length of 1000m, compared to the limit of 750m today. This is expected to bring about a major boost in productivity. The first Modalohr service was introduced in 2003 as a kind of rolling highway for the relatively short (175 kms) transalpine axis between Aiton near Chambéry (for Lyon) and Orbassano, close to Torino.

As is well-known, the Modalohr system is a drive on/drive off one, so it can cater for driver-accompanied loads as well as unaccompanied trailers. Even on the Franco-Italian crossing, however, forwarders and hauliers gradually adapted mainly to unaccompanied.

For many years the main limitation was the structure gauge in the Mont Cenis (Monte Cenisio) tunnel and the service was limited to low height trailers and tank trailers. Following gauge improvements, 4m high trailers can now use the service. Around 0.5 Mtpa of goods are now transported on the Aiton-Orbassano line, and there are plans to extend it to Lyon, where a new Modalohr terminal would link up with the Le Boulou-Bettembourg line. The transalpine service receives an annual subvention of €5M from the French and Italian governments.

A Modalohr terminal further enhances the prospect of Calais becoming a new railhead for the UK, as a CargoBeamer terminal is being set up in the new Premier Logistics Park and from 2015/16 will provide services to Berlin and Legnica in Poland. Both are horizontal transfer systems catering for non-liftable trailers, so will provide a rail option for the Continental leg of the trips made by the huge number of heavy goods vehicles crossing the Dover Straits via Eurotunnel or the ferries.

Other than limited access via HS1 (operationally only 6h/24h and geographically only Barking in East London), the UK is excluded from combi-transport with semi-trailers or high cubes swaps on standard flatcars becuase of the restricted tail structure gauge.