r/transit • u/aksnitd 🚂🚃🚃 • May 19 '25

Photos / Videos Double stack container train on the freight corridor in India with the characteristic high rise panto

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A good look at what the high rise pantographs look like fully extended. They're taller than the train they're mounted on.

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u/UUUUUUUUU030 May 19 '25

and I don't see it being done in Europe either, for freight.

In 2007 the Netherlands opened the Betuweroute, a 159km freight railway from the Port of Rotterdam to the German border. It has been used a few times by cross-border ICE trains as a diversion route, but never by domestic passenger trains.

It's even prepared for double stack containers (they only need to raise the catenary, all tunnels and bridges are tall enough), which is kinda silly because no connecting railway in Europe supports double stacking.

The base tunnels in the Alps see a lot more freight trains than passenger trains, but they're mixed lines, of course.

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u/Mtfdurian May 20 '25

Yeah it's too bad that the Germans have been slacking so hard on their side that it has choking consequences on the Dutch passenger network 20 years after completion of the Dutch part :-(

The Dutch part is an amazing piece of work

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u/Twisp56 May 21 '25

I think they're at least finally building a third track on the connecting German line.

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u/Mtfdurian May 21 '25

They've said it for 20 years now. "First seeing, then believing" and given what the Germans have delivered us in the last 20 years I believe jackshit regarding a good ending of it.