Motorail

A Motorail train or accompanied car train (ACT) is a passenger train on which passengers can take their car or automobile along with them on their journey. Passengers are carried in normal passenger carriages or in sleeping carriages on longer journeys, while the cars are loaded into autoracks, car-carriers, or flatcars that normally form part of the same train.

Motorail services are not the same as car shuttle trains or car-carrying train services. The latter usually operate over relatively short distances, on lines passing through a rail tunnel and connecting two places not easily accessible to each other by road. On car shuttle train services, unlike on motorail services, the occupants of the road vehicles being carried on the train usually stay with their vehicle throughout the rail journey.

Examples of Motorail services

Australia

Great Southern Rail provides a Motorail service on its long-distance Indian Pacific, The Ghan, and The Overland services.^[1][2][3]

Traveltrain in Queensland offers a Motorail service on its Sunlander and Spirit of the Outback trains.^[4]

The Victorian Railways formerly offered Motorail on its Vinelander, and Sunraysia services on the Mildura line.^[5] The New South Wales Railways (later the Public Transport Commission) once offered Motorail services on its long-distance lines.

Austria

In Austria, several of the regular day and night trains of the Österreichische Bundesbahnen include car-carrier wagons. In English, the service is advertised as "Motorail Trains".^[6]

Canada

A North American predecessor to the original Auto-Train was a service run by the Canadian National Railway (CN) that allowed passengers to bring their automobiles along on selected passenger trains. This service proved unsuccessful.

The Ontario Northland Railway's former Little Bear mixed cargo-freight train had several flatcars that were used to carry vehicles from Cochrane to Moosonee.

Chile

In Chile, EFE (Empresa de los Ferrocarriles del Estado) operates a service called "Autotren"^[7] between Santiago and Temuco.

Czech Republic

Currently, there are two services per day all-year-round to Košice, Slovakia (EuroCity Košičan daytime and Euronight Slovakia overnight) and an additional daily overnight service between Prague and Poprad-Tatry, Slovakia (fastrain Hornád since 1997, now EuroCity Košičan). There used to be a seasonal service between Prague and Split (fasttrain Jadran) which took 24 hours, in seasons 2003–2005 weekly, in seasons 2007–2009 daily.

Finland

In Finland, VR (website) has a popular automobile-carrying service on its night trains between the south and the north; the service transports 35,000 automobiles a year. VR recently bought 15 new auto carriers for €8 million. The service operates with trains originating from both Helsinki and Turku first stopping at Tampere; from there they follow the same line to the next stop in Oulu. Thereafter, the line splits with one line going up to Kolari and another line making stops at Rovaniemi and Kemijärvi. These trains also include sleeper cars allowing passengers to sleep well before driving the next morning.^[8]

France

In France, the SNCF's Auto/train service^[9] comprises several overnight automobile-carrying trains throughout France. In the past, all of the Auto/trains also carried sleeping cars. Nowadays passengers travel on a separate train to their automobiles. Typically, passengers drop off their car any time during the day and then use a separate train to reach their destination, where they can pick up the car any time the following day.

This service is available between 13 railway stations: the Gare de Bercy in Paris is the main auto-train terminal. There are also terminals in the stations of Avignon (separate station), Biarritz, Bordeaux, Briançon, Brive, Fréjus-St-Raphaël (separate station), Lyon-Perrache, Marseille-Saint-Charles, Nice, Narbonne (separate station), Toulon, and Toulouse.^[10] The automobiles are carried in open railcars. Other services are offered to the Auto Train service : a jockey to pick your car up at home, complementary insurances, free bus to leave the arrival station (Bercy, Avignon, Fréjus...), free parking... Since 2012, connections between other cities than Paris have been created, for instance, Bordeaux-Biarritz or Bordeaux-Nice.

Motorail, railway station Neu-Isenburg, Germany, 2011.

Germany

In Germany, DB AutoZug^[11] has services from sixteen stations to cities in France, Italy and Austria. These are very popular, with 200,000 automobiles transported yearly and half a million passengers. In 2005, DB AutoZug celebrated 75 years of automobile-and-person-carrying trains. Austrian railway ÖBB runs a daily operated EuroNight overnight motorail train from Vienna to Hamburg and will introduce a new daily operated service from Vienna to Düsseldorf in December 2014 as a replacement for Düsseldorf to Innsbruck and Villach services being withdrawn by DB AutoZug.

The operator of motorail services in Germany Deutsche Bahn announced the withdrawal of all motorail trains by December 2017 as these trains are not profitable.^[12] Deutsche Bahn is now testing a new concept of transporting passenger's vehicles called "Auto+Zug". On the former classical operated national lines Berlin/Düsseldorf - Munich the cars and motocycles are now transported on lorries by DB Schenker, whereas the passengers travel in normal long-distance or overnight services in First Class and pick up their vehicles at the destination. All international services will be withdrawn in December 2014, in the timetable period of 2015 there are only the national Hamburg-Munich (part of the DB City Night Line network) and Hamburg-Lörrach services left.^[13]

Italy

In Italy, Trenitalia operated national Motorail services, advertised as “Auto e moto al seguito”. As of 12 December 2011, all of these services have been withdrawn.^[14] After the withdrawal of motorail services by state-owned Trenitalia the private-owned railway company Arenaways started overnight motorail trains running from Torino in the north of Italy to Reggio Calabria and Bari in the south. Talgo train coaches from RENFE group in Spain were used for the services.^[15] After the bankrupty of Arenaways due to massively manipulated rules by state-owned Trenitalia to exclude the competitor from the market, all services were withdrawn.^[16]

Today, the Dutch travel agency Treinreiswinkel^[17] has a connection between Düsseldorf and Verona, and the state-owned Austrian railway ÖBB connect Verona and Livorno with the Austrian capital of Vienna.^[18]

Japan

A Japanese "car train" in Nagoya in 1988.

Several overnight "car train" (カートレイン) services were operated by the Japanese National Railways and its successor JR Group between 1985 and 1999. The first such service operated between Shiodome Freight Terminal in Tokyo and Higashi-Kokura Freight Terminal in northern Kyushu. At various times during the 1990s, similar services were operated between Nagoya and Kyushu, between Tokyo and Hokkaido through the Seikan Tunnel, and within Hokkaido.

The freight terminal at Ebisu Station was used as a terminal for car train services prior to its closure for redevelopment as the Ebisu Garden Place complex, at which point such services were moved to Hamamatsucho Station.

There were a number of problems with these services which contributed to their eventual cancellation, including fairly severe size restrictions on the vehicles that could be transported, lack of on-board dining facilities, revenue sharing issues between regional operating companies following the privatization of JR, and competition with both long-distance car ferries and combination air/rental car travel products.

Netherlands

The AutoSlaapTrein service runs in the summer months from 's-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch) in the Netherlands to Koper in Slovenia, to Alessandria and Livorno in Italy, and Frejus and Avignon in the South of France.

EETC, the owner of the AutoSlaapTrein, suspended their services in April 2015. Another Dutch company, Treinreiswinkel, continued in May 2015 the Autoslaaptrein with a connection between Düsseldorf and Verona.

Poland

In the early 1980s PKP offered motorail services between the following stations: Szczecin Dąbie, Trzebiatów, Gdynia Główna, Warszawa Główna, Poznań Główny, Katowice, Kraków Główny, and Zakopane. Services ran overnight and passengers were carried in sleeping cars and couchettes.

By the end of the 1990s PKP operated only a single motorail service on overnight trains between Gdynia and Zakopane. The service never gained essential popularity and ultimately was withdrawn in 2004. Among many factors which led to closure of this service, it was criticised for being too cumbersome: while in Zakopane the passengers' cars were available almost immediately, it took nearly two hours to load or unload cars in Gdynia.

Switzerland

In Switzerland, several car shuttle trains run, called Autoverlad; no motorail services exist.

Turkey

The only motorail train of Turkey is running between Villach/Austria and Edirne/Turkey mainly for the Turkish workers abroad, passing through Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Bulgaria. The whole journey completes 1400 km in 30 hours. The train is operated by Optima Tours.^[19]

United Kingdom

British Rail operated Motorail services from 1955 serving various destination, but had discontinued them by the time the state-owned body was wound-up in the mid 1990s. Privatised train operator First Great Western went on to revive the service between London and Penzance in 1998, operating it until September 2005.

United States

Amtrak operates their dedicated Auto Train between Lorton, Virginia (near Washington, D.C.) and Sanford, Florida (near Orlando), a distance of 855 miles (1,376 km).

See also

• Car shuttle train
• Eurotunnel Shuttle
• Modalohr
• Rolling highway
• Transporter wagon

References

External links

• Motorail trains in Europe
• http://www.seat61.com/Motorail.htm
• Autotren in Chile dead link]
• Seat61
• Dutch Motorail (Autoslaaptrein)