What are freight operations like in Poland?

[SurvivorSean]

With all the yard tracks and some industries I've noticed on the maps, I'm curious what operations are like in Poland.  I don't think some things are implemented quite yet or at least it doesn't seem to be (which is perfectly fine).

In North Americal there is less passenger and more freight, I take it is the opposite here from my understanding even before the sim.  I'm curious about shunting operations and other things and can we expect to see them eventually in the sim.

Considering there are shunting signals (I'm sure this is used for passenger service splits etc. as well) I imagine it's something we will eventually see.

Thanks

Sean

[TobiasM0815]

 

Rail freight transport in Europe has two categories. There are so-called single wagon trains and block trains.

The concept of single-car trains works like this:
There is a transfer train for each railway line, which fetches wagons from the sidings on this line and brings them to the marshalling yard. Sometimes there are only 1-2 cars per siding. The train is quite long at the marshalling yard because there are usually many sidings on the route.

There the train locomotive is uncoupled and all couplings are released, a shunting locomotive pushes the wagons over the "mountain". In rolling, the cars are now sorted according to direction.

At the end, corresponding connecting trains between marshalling yards come out on all tracks. One of these transfer trains is now driving to a new marshalling yard. There it is broken up again over the "mountain" into the respective transfer trains. Which then drive back onto the tracks and deliver the wagons to the sidings, pick up new ones there and everything starts again.

 

Block trains are easier:

A very large amount of freight is transported in the same type of wagon from point A (loading) to point B (unloading), on the way at most wagon groups are rearranged or discarded.

 

 

Situation in Poland today:

There are actually many more passenger trains than freight trains.

Single wagon traffic has come to an almost complete standstill. The classic transfer trains no longer exist. The marshalling yards are usually used to park wagons that are not required.

Most freight trains are block trains (coal, ores, steel, cement, crushed stone), etc.

However, there are countries in Europe where single-wagon transport is not dead and is currently becoming even more attractive thanks to good marketing. As an example Czech Republic and Germany. In Slovakia, too, there is still a lot going on at marshalling yards.

 

 

 

[SurvivorSean]

Interesting.  Well I'm looking forward to whatever is available.

Thanks

Sean

[SurvivorSean]

So on a further note I've noticed the 15 minute layovers for certain cargo trains hourly at Bezen for example.  What is the purpose of the layover (to change crews?) and is it normal to have that many trains scheduled hourly?

Thanks

Sean

[stronzio]

In this specific case those are mostly planned stops for being overtaken by faster trains, in sosnowiec/bedzin there usually are IC trains scheduled ~10' later that would eventually catch up down the line.

I assume this kind of structured scheduling is for gaming purposes, IRL Freight trains have much more random schedules and are quite prone to delay (or more rarely, early runnings), so such stops may or may not happen, or may be moved to other stations. Common reasons for scheduled stops are crew changes, dispatching reasons (meets/overtakes for example) or technical reasons (e.g. adding/dropping wagons, direction changes etc.)