UAE - Etihad Rail

[rtt_rules]

United Arab emirates (UAE) - Etihad Rail (Means "Union Rail" in Arabic)

With the Persian Gulf / Arabian Gulf access being closed at the strait of Homuz the not long built Etihad Rail line to the East coast port of Fujarah and opening of line and container terminals to the emirates of Dubai (2) and Abu Dhabi (multiple) and soon to be Sharjah has show its strength.

The network is short by Australian standard, barely 700 km from East coast port to the Saudi Border with Dubai roughly in the middle. the various container terminals and ports are all accessed by short branches up to 15 km long. Only the Port of Fujrarah container yard is effectively the Nth end of the line with no branch and likewise the Saudi Border terminus and container terminal.

The network started 12 years ago simply to move sulphur removed from the natural gas to the port and was expanded from this.

All container trains are
- either max 1km long or 500m long
- Operate only well wagons for double stacking and use shared bogies. (I do not know the axle load)
- All container and a number of mineral trains I've seen on the main line, not sulphur trains are topped and tailed with EMD_SD70ACS CO-CO (45 in total)
- None of the container yards have any scope for shunting a loco from one end to the other, ie all container yards operate as dead ends with only points at the start of the yard where the various sidings branch off.
- What I have noticed is that most container yards seem to all have a short siding for use, I'm not sure but assume defect rolling stock.
So in summary, they do not shunt their container trains, hey run as a fixed set and locos remain during loading and unloading.

I think they recognised early on they are effectively a short to medium haul railway and built and operate it acordingly. ie no shunting and shorter trains to reduce dwell times.

As the line is fairly modern, its built very straight with expection being the mountain crossing on the east coast.

With the Iranian war, operations have really stepped up with the number of trains to the large Jebel Ali port (Dubai) exceeding at last 5 a day which is used more as a transfer station as very little sea freight and likely almost no container sea freight is currently taking place, likely more. There is a 25 to 40 km long queue for trucks to get into Fujarah port.

Passenger services are still very limited as the bulk of the stations including Dubai and Sharjah are not yet complete. Majority of stations are off the main on a branch as main is inlanddue to existing development along the Gulf coast. Trains are designed to enter the branch to the station, then reverse back with all the branches joining the main with a "Y". Again the trains and track layout choosen such that double ended fixed 2 car sets ( CAF and CRC) no shunting. The time lost to access the stations on the Y" branches which is up to 5 km from the main is probably 5 min each way.

Max Train speeds are 120 km/h for freight and 200 km/h for DMU pax.