French Minister of Transport, Clément Beaune, presided the signing of the contract for the supply of wagons that will circulate on the Cherbourg-Mouguerre multimodal motorway on behalf of Lohr and Brittany Ferries.
Main characteristics of this ‘rail motorway’:
A rail service with sea connections linking Poole, Portsmouth and Rosslare to Cherbourg, allowing seamless transport of unaccompanied trailers from Ireland and UK to the Iberian Peninsula and vice versa.
A 970km rail journey replacing a 920km road journey.
A regular year-round service, with one daily return journey, six to seven days per week, operated by two trains:
Each train is composed of 21 MODALOHR UIC wagons with double pockets, allowing 42 trailers to be transported. Trailers are rolled on and off using specialised horizontal handling equipment.
From 2024 trains will be routed via Saintes, then from 2026 via the Poitiers-Angoulême-Bordeaux mainline.
Journeys have been timetabled to connect with ferry arrival and departure times, whilst also avoiding periods of peak road traffic in Cherbourg.
