Třinecké Železárny has started operating a stationary unloading machine for railway wagons, built by railway logistics services company Innofreight.
The machine facilitates safe unloading of various types of fine ore and iron ore concentrates. Its capacity is up to 5 million tonnes/year of iron ore, with approximately 840t being unloaded in one hour, Kallanish hears from Innofreight. The wagons are shifted by a cable-shunting device called “Turtle”. The machine is controlled from an air-conditioned cabin, so that the operator is protected from noise, the Austrian supplier notes.
In addition to building the unloading machine, Innofreight has delivered wagons and special “MonTainer” containers, which it says enable more efficient utilisation of the freight trains to Třinec.
Earlier this year, Innofreight presented a new transporting system for wire coils named WireStanchions, commissioned by Austrian steelmaker voestalpine. Compared to transporting bundles in one layer with accordingly long trains, fewer wagons are now required as each wagon can carry up to 40-50% more payload, Innofreight claims. An InnoWaggon equipped with the WireStanchions can transport up to 38 wire coil bundles with a payload of 141t.
The system has been in use for voestalpine‘s inter-plant transportation since late last year, in a project with a transport capacity of around 2,000 truck transports per year. These are now transported by rail from the wire rod mill in St. Peter-Freienstein, Austria, to the wire drawing plant in Finsterwalde, Germany, some 770km away. This shift from road to rail saves around 1,500t of CO2 emissions, according to Innofreight.
Christian Koehl Germany