The Ukrainian Railways joint-stock company (Ukrzaliznytsia) has increased the number of bogies for transferring rolling stock onto 1435-mm standard gauge tracks on the territory of Ukraine almost 10 times since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The deputy director of Ukrzalisnytsia’s commercial operations department, Valerii Tkachev, announced this during a meeting with representatives of the agricultural market, the CFTS portal reports, citing the Rail Insider publication.
Ukrainian agribusinesses had to rebuild their logistics because of Russia’s armed aggression against the country and the blockade of Ukrainian seaports. Most grain shippers routed their cargoes through border crossings and encountered the problem of shortage of bogies for transferring rolling stock onto European-gauge tracks.
According to Tkachev, Ukrzaliznytsia had 300 bogies for transferring rolling stock onto European-gauge tracks at the end of February. However, this number needed to be increased because of the constant need. Currently, there are almost 2,900 bogies at five transfer points.
More than half of this number (1,600) are assigned to the interchange points at the Vadul-Siret station. However, the border crossing with Romania continues to experience a shortage of bogies. This is primarily because of the idling of railcars waiting to enter the Romanian port of Constanta. According to Tkachev, the turnaround time of rolling stock on this route currently exceeds 17 days.
According to the deputy director of Ukrzaliznytsia’s department of commercial operations, it is currently impossible to further increase the number of bogies because there will be insufficient space for storing them.
