Train ferry

A train ferry is a ship designed to carry railway vehicles.

Typically, one level of the ship is fitted with railway tracks, and the ship has a door at the front or rear to give access to the wharves.

The wharf (called a "slip") has a ramp which connect the railway proper to the ship, allowing for the water level to rise and fall with the tides. For an example of a specialized slip to receive railcars see ferry slip.

While railway vehicles can and are shipped on the decks or in the holds of ordinary ships, purpose built train ferries are much quicker to load and unload, especially as several vehicles can be loaded or unloaded at once.

Examples

Australia

• Grafton, New South Wales over Clarence River pending construction of bridge, 1920s to 1930s

• The Port Lincoln division is isolated from the main system by desert, and rolling stock is transferred as required by ship or by road low loaders.

China

• Zhanjiang, Guangdong and Haikou, Hainan

Denmark

• Rodby – Puttgarten – short cut connecting Denmark to Germany.

• Copenhagen, Denmark and Hamburg, Germany, 6 trains/day

Georgia

• Russia to Georgia bypasses Abkhazia

Italy

• Mainland to Sicily

New Zealand

• North Island to South Island – 4 ferries – proposal to build new South Island terminal to reduce Ferry distance and time.

Norway

• Some fjords are bridged by train ferrys, including the siding to the Hydro-Norsk deuterium factory, as seen in a movie starring Kirk Douglas called The Heroes of Telemark.

Sweden

• Malmö, Sweden and Berlin, Germany 1 train/day

Turkey

• Lake Van – will be replaced by railway along lake shore when traffic increases enough.
• Bosphorus – bids called in 2005 to replace with tunnel.

United Kingdom

• Dover to Calais, France

United States

• New York Harbor, transferring freight cars between Jersey City, New Jersey, and Brooklyn, New York, run as needed.

• Frankfurt, Lake Michigan – defunct

Portage railways

The opposite of a train ferry is a portage railway.

• A train ferry overcomes a lack of a land link.
• A portage railway overcomes a lack of a navigatable stretch of a river.

For example, before the Panama canal, the Panama Railway provided a link between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.

Hazards of train ferries

While no train ferries (as far as it is known) have met with disaster at, car ferries such as the Herald of Free Enterprise – which share some of the weakness of train ferries, have met with disaster.

These weaknesses include:

• Trains are loaded at a rather high level, making the ship top heavy.
• The train deck is difficult to compartmentalise, so that sloshing flood water can destabilise the ship.
• The sea doors where the trains go and out are a weakness, even if placed at the rear of the ship.
• The train carriages need to be strongly secured less they break away and roll around.