HHLA opens new rail terminal in Hamburg

HHLA opens new rail terminal in Hamburg The first train with 80 containers on board has departed from Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG’s (HHLA) upgraded on-dock rail container terminal at the Port of Hamburg, destined for Prague in the Czech Republic.
   The improved rail terminal at the Container Terminal Tollerort (CTT) has been expanded from about 10,000 square meters to about 70,000 square meters after the in-filling of the former colliery port. CCT will now see containers loaded onto railcars by transtainer gantry instead of straddle carriers. The terminal's five new tracks have been constructed to a length of 720 meters, so that block trains can also be handled there. In addition, CTT will open its new rail container terminal to intermodal traffic.
   Further changes planned at CTT over the next few months will bring improved truck clearance facilities, a multi-storey car park and a new office block. All told, the expansion program should double CTT's handling capacity to more than 2 million TEUs.
   'The new CTT on-dock rail container terminal is a further step towards expanding HHLA's rail-side handling capacities,' said Stefan Behn of HHLA's executive board. 'In the future we shall be able to handle five times as many containers by rail at CTT as previously.'
   Wolfgang Hurtienne, head of port planning at the Hamburg Port Authority, said: 'The expansion of CTT is one of the important projects towards achieving the Port of Hamburg's goal of an 18 million-TEU capacity in 2015. The high performance on-dock rail terminal clearly underlines Hamburg's importance as a rail port.'