HSL adds Rhine-alternative rail capacity with 4,000-tonne trains

Trains carrying up to 4,000 tonnes of freight per service have been running between Amsterdam and southern Germany since the end of October, as rail operator HSL Logistik moves to absorb capacity lost on the Rhine to falling water levels.

The additional services operate on the international corridor linking the Netherlands with southern Germany, offering industrial and logistics shippers an alternative to inland waterway transport. Low water has reduced the loading capacity of inland vessels at many locations along the river, creating bottlenecks for companies that depend on the waterway for inbound raw materials.

HSL says the extra trains compensate for part of that lost river capacity — not all of it — and are intended to maintain supplies of raw materials to the Rhine-Neckar region, the industrial cluster around Mannheim and Ludwigshafen.

What is moving, and how much?

Coal is among the commodities on the new services, hauled in trains of up to 4,000 tonnes behind pairs of locomotives working in double traction. For scale, that is roughly the payload a single heavy inland barge might carry at normal water levels; at current river stages, vessels load well below their nominal capacity.

Beyond coal, the traffic mix includes:

• bulk goods
• liquid fuels
• petroleum products

HSL has not disclosed how many additional trains per week it is running, nor the total tonnage moved to date. The 4,000-tonne figure is a per-service ceiling, not a measured monthly volume, and the company frames the operation as partial compensation for the waterway shortfall rather than a full replacement.

How do the trains cross the border?

HSL has hired multi-system locomotives specifically for the new services. Because the locomotives carry approval for cross-border operation, trains run between Amsterdam and Germany without changing traction at the frontier — a small detail that matters commercially, since locomotive swaps at borders add time and cost that would erode rail's competitiveness against a single river passage.

The operator has not said how many locomotives it hired, from which lessor, or at what cost. Those omissions make it difficult to judge whether the service would remain economic once Rhine levels recover.

How long will it last?

The additional capacity is initially planned for three months, which would carry it to the end of January. HSL says the operation could be extended by a further three months if low water levels — and the resulting demand for alternative transport — persist.

That extension clause is conditional, not committed. Much depends on winter rainfall in the Rhine catchment; a recovery in water levels would remove the commercial rationale for the extra trains regardless of shipper demand.

Who is HSL?

HSL Logistik has been part of TX Logistik since 2023, when TX Logistik's parent acquired Exploris Deutschland Holding. TX Logistik is itself owned by FS Logistix, the freight logistics arm of Italy's FS Italiane Group, giving the German operation a state-backed Italian shareholder behind it.

TX Logistik operates a European network covering eleven countries. In 2025 it ran 13,914 trains and recorded 8.5 billion tonne-kilometres — equivalent, on average, to moving roughly 23 million tonne-kilometres of freight every day — with annual revenue of around €320 million.

HSL itself focuses on domestic and cross-border rail freight. Its commodity portfolio spans containers, steel, gypsum, vehicles, grain, construction machinery and liquid fuels, making the Rhine-alternative coal and fuels traffic an extension of existing capability rather than a new line of business.

The test now is durability: whether the three-month window converts into a standing corridor product, or whether HSL scales the service back as soon as the Rhine regains its draught.