Page 74 - 360.revista de Alta Velocidad - Nº 5

Piqueras, Anibal. Saura, Joan. Paños, Francisco.

1. Introduction

The decision of constructing the main Spanish railway network to a 1668 mm track gauge
continues being today one of the major challenges for the railway operation in Spain. Both
freight and passenger trains find significant difficulties when it comes to operating in two
different track gauges, mainly from/to the border between France and Spain.
In the case of passenger trains, automatic gauge changing trains and changeover facilities have
been highly developed due to the decision taken by the Spanish Government of using the standard
1435 mm track gauge in HSR network. The need of facing the challenge of the coexistence of
two different track gauges in the main passenger network (HSR lines and conventional lines)
gave priority to the stakeholders to find the solution to this problem.
However, as almost the whole new HSR lines are not designed for mixed use and freight traffic,
the need to solve the gauge problem has been forgotten in time for the freight trains. This
brings us today to the situation that Spain has one of the lowest percentage rate of rail freight
modal share (both inland and international freight). This lack of competiveness of rail freight
1
transport is due, among others, to the different track gauge and the fact of not having developed
variable gauge systems for freight wagons.
The Spanish infrastructure manager ADIF, being aware of the problem, published a call for
tenders in 2015 to develop an automatic gauge technology for freight trains. The state of the
art and future benefits of this new technology will be analysed in this paper.

2. State of the art

2.1 The different track gauge and existing solutions to the problem

It is known that the challenge of different track gauges has existed since the first constructions
of railway lines. The main problem of the break of gauge is that a train cannot pass from one
track gauge to another and this implies, therefore, a railway border. We can find one of the
best examples between the track gauge of the Spanish conventional network (1668 mm) and
the track gauge of France and most European countries (1435 mm).

Different solutions have been implemented historically to solve this problem, to eliminate
these railway borders, we could list the next types of solutions that are valid for freight trains:

a. Interchange of wagon axles ad wheels, as found in Cerbère/Hendaye borders
b. Transfer of goods, helped by large cranes that transfer the containers from one wagon to
another, as found in Portbou/Irun borders
c. Using tracks of three or more rails so that it exists continuity for one of the track gauges, as
found in some railway sections in Spain
d. Using automatic gauge changing trains (a solution yet not very extended for freight traffic)

The two first solutions (a and b) require big areas to place the necessary tracks, factories and
cranes to carry out the interchange. Apart from that, these two solutions entail an inconvenient
in terms of time-consuming process.

1 European Court of Auditors (2016). Rail freight transport in the EU: still not on the right track.

72 360.revista de alta velocidad