INTERVIEW |
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2013 we were back on top of things. The first few months of 2013 we had trouble accessing the tracks, by the end of the year we ran a train to Sihanoukville with 50 containers, we offered the service for free to try an encourage people to use them.
” John Guiry CEO of Cambodia’s Royal Railway How has your technical knowledge helped you in this role heading up rebuilding Cambodia’s railways? In this country you need to have that, I have been in corporate management since I was 27, I was head of operations towards the end of the Government era in Australia through to the split between passenger and freight trains. As the railways evolved and all these changes happened, I bought in the aggregate wage system and saw through the period of modernization and then I got the opportunity to come here in 2010 and it was like an Indiana Jones movie – we opened up the cupboards and blew off the cobwebs and got to work. The railway hadn’t run for two years, so I was COO of nothing really. We had to dig through the mud and get it to where it is today as it’s starting to look like a real railway, we do 44 trips a day now and passenger trains are bedded in and we’re starting to increase our services a week. The Northern line to Poipet is open now. The speeds are still slow, the track is designed for 80kph with an average of 50kph. The speeds are coming up on the passenger trains and today we’re sending a fuel train up there. How is the track rehabilitation process going? The track rehabilitation work was carried out by the Government with a loan from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the money was intended to upgrade the north and south line, the north was completed, and parts of south were done before the cash ran out. The line was in a worse condition than I think we realised. There was a lot of debate about problems with culverts or drainages or the different types of clay, during dry season the clay is like concrete and then in the rainy season the place is surrounded by water. In 2011 and 2012 we had some problems with track rehabilitation but by the end of
The last train to Sihanoukville at the end of the civil war took 28 days because of the terrible condition it was in. Now we have to try and get back the people’s trust and make the case that a freight train is worthwhile for a small or medium company looking to move goods down to the port.
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Back before the war Sihanoukville only had three ships a week so getting freight there on time was essential. Since 2013, however, it’s going up every year, two years ago I started telling people we were going to run out of wagons and locomotives, and now we are. We have 136 wagons and six locomotives, in reality we need over 200 wagons and ten locomotives to fulfill the orders we have. If those new trains arrived outside today, we’d put them straight to work. We now do four service to Sihanoukville a day. The northern line we do one a week, but we need to do three a week. People are getting used to the railway and seeing the benefits of being able to get 120 containers on one order all being able to go on one train and arriving at the same time and getting on the ship at the same time. 560 road trucks have to get in and out of the port between 7am and midday and they can’t do it. Logistically it’s a headache and that message is starting to sink in.
Kris Kosmala General Manager for Asia Pacific at Quintiq Do you see China-Europe rail as more viable than the China-ASEAN rail? The major rail lane coming from the OBOR (One Belt One Road) is the route that links dry ports in Europe with major Chinese cities, a number of these central Asian economies will benefit from the network effect. In the future, there will be a need for our solutions because there will be feeder trains or local trains which will need to be synergized with the main line. In terms of freight, rail offers real time inventory, it takes 15 days to get to Europe versus 45 days by ship, so even with the higher cost the real time inventory that companies can run cancels out these fears. I believe freight to Europe will dominate the discussion for now but the Chinese economy is going through a transition period, many companies will move their factories to Southeast Asia instead of automating. When this happens, the ports will be effected but rail will actually benefit from this if the infrastructure is in place to support the growth of exporting companies there. What issues concerning network management do you see facing the Asia Pacific region in the next five to ten years? Integration. In the past, everyone did their own little thing, in the future we have to have an integrated system of control for the track and the train. The more data we can get in real time we can adjust the network dynamically instead of planning a day in advance. So regional traffic control centres will have to be set up so that freight and passenger trains are all on everyone’s radar, signalling and control and connected gauges. With the exception of OBOR which is building a network linking so many economies, in places like Thailand and Vietnam the major projects Rail Professional