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.
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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.
Canada
- Newfoundland - Canada
- Prince Edward Island - Canada
- Vancouver Island - Canada
China
Denmark
- 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 - 2 ferries - proposal to build new South Island terminal to reduce ferry distance and time.
Norway
- Some fjords are bridged by train ferries, including the siding to the Hydro-Norsk deuterium factory, as seen in the movie starring Kirk Douglas called The Heroes of Telemark. See Today's Railways #113.
Sweden
Turkey
- Lake Van - will be replaced by railway along lake shore when traffic increases enough.
- Bosphorus - bids called in 2005 to replace with tunnel.
- Black Sea - Ilyichevsk, Ukraine to Derince, Turkey by passes a break of gauge
Ukraine
- Black Sea - see above
United Kingdom
United States
- New York Harbor, transferring freight cars between Jersey City, New Jersey, and Brooklyn, New York, run as needed. This ferry is operated, as rail cars with flammable and hazardous materials are not permitted in the former Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels under Manhattan and the Hudson River.
- The Alaska Railroad is only connected to the rest of the North American rail system via train ferries. The Alaska Railroad runs its own ferries from Whittier, Alaska to Seattle, Washington, and the Canadian National Railway operates its AquaTrain between Whittier and Prince Rupert, British Columbia.
- 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 sea, car ferries such as the Herald of Free Enterprise, which share some of the weaknesses 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 in 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.