Camco Technologies has been selected as the automation partner for the East-West Gate Terminal on the border of Hungary and Ukraine. Once complete, the intermodal terminal will have gate automation, camera systems for vehicles and container tracking. Terminal management will be able to connect with customers online in real-time, monitoring and tracking the position of containers and trucks in transit as well.

Located at an important junction on the New Silk Road, the East-West Gate (EWG) is set to play an important role in encouraging rail freight traffic between Europe and Asia. The route via Ukraine is attracting more and more attention, but the infrastructure of Hungary is lagging behind to fully grasp the opportunities this brings. With this new state-of-the art terminal, and coupled with the investments currently carried out in the rest of the country, this could all be changed. Operations are already scheduled for the first quarter of 2022.

Gate automation

EWG has selected Camco Technologies for the automation of its terminal gate access as well as RTG, RMG crane and rail Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Regarding the first, it will provide the gate automation hard- and software. An in- and outbound truck OCR portal will register all truck, semi-trailer and container traffic from and to the terminal.

The OCR data will be validated at 4 incoming and 3 outgoing truck lanes, equipped with kiosk and traffic control systems. A Camco Vehicle Booking System will enable upfront registering of container drop-off and pick-up, speeding the gate process and improving truck-turnaround.

Crane OCR

The terminal has three crane areas with rail tracks of 850 meters, suitable for serving full length trains. The cranes will also be capable of handling 45” containers and cranable semi- trailers. For keeping track of containers and semi-trailers during stacking and train loading operations, Camco provides crane OCR for one double cantilever and for two single cantilever Automated Rail Mounted Gantry cranes (ARMG) as well as an OCR camera
system for one Rubber Tired Gantry (RTG) crane.

The crane OCR system, connected to the crane PLC, will register every container move between the wide-gauge and the narrow-gauge train and every container transfer from rail to stack and truck. Apart from container railcar of semi-trailer data, the Camco camera system also provides crystal clear pictures for damage recording and better claims management.

Automated inventories of complete trains

To allow EWG registering all incoming and outgoing train wagons and containers, Camco will provide two Rail OCR portals the entry and exit rail tracks of the terminal. With the rail photo gate, it will be possible to automatically provide inventories of complete trains.

For Camco Technologies, the EWG automation project is a strategic New Silk Road reference. Jan Bossens, CEO Camco Technologies: “We are grateful being able to join EWG in this unique greenfield automation journey. We are convinced it will help EWG to attract new customers as there is no doubt the project will also become a lighthouse project for us, showcasing our automation expertise in Europe.”

Meeting point

The EWG will be the meeting point of the Russian wide-gauge and the European narrow- gauge railways in Hungary. As the western gateway to the New Silk Road, it offers a faster alternative route to Central and Southeast Europe for freight traffic from Asia compared to the route via Poland.

With an area of 85 ha in size, the terminal has a storage capacity of 15,000 TEUs of loaded and/or empty containers at a time. It will also be able to store 500 TEU of refrigerated containers. Moreover, it is SEVESO compliant, so it will be possible to reload and store a significant amount of gas containers and containers with dangerous goods. The theoretical capacity of the terminal is 1 million TEU per year. This relates to the infrastructure improvements planned on the Hungarian railway network, CEO of EWG János Tálosi explained earlier in an interview with RailFreight Live.