LTG Cargo achieved milestone as its test to avoid Russian-gauge standard and replace it with European-gauge lines, travelling from Lithuania to Estonia by rail was a success.
“As part of our efforts to integrate our country’s railways into the European rail system, we celebrate the achievement of the FREE Rail programme implemented by LTG Group. The successful arrival of the train to Muuga not only proves that we can work according to European principles in the broad-gauge area, but also that we are gaining experience for smooth international connections on Rail Baltica,” the CEO at LTG Group, Egidijus Lazauskas, said.
The company is continuing westward diversification and has successfully completed its first test run across the Baltic States to the Muuga Harbour in Estonia using the EU rail industry standard without data exchange and without interfacing with the Russian Railway Transport Council’s (RTC) systems.
“Synchronisation with European networks is happening not only in the energy sector. Changes are underway that will bring the Lithuanian railway system closer to Europe. The test run is an important event in terms of national security. In energy terms, it is equivalent to a test run of a system in isolation,” the Minister of Transport and Communications, Eugenijus Sabutis, said.
The test train set consisted of 15 wagons in total, of which 10 platforms for semi-trailers and 5 for containers. The train, pulled by an LTG Cargo locomotive, left Palemonas on January 27, 2025, and reached Muuga the next day.
For the train test travelling from Lithuania to Estonia by rail, “we began preparation in a responsible way, step by step, bringing our business model closer to European standards. In some cases, we even had to set precedents — for example, registering flat wagons in the European Vehicle Register required the creation of a process. We obtained a Europe-wide certification as a broad-gauge maintainer, certified LTG Cargo locomotives in Estonia, and cooperated with railway infrastructure managers in other countries so that not only could we go to Muuga without changing locomotives, but also so that the necessary data could be exchanged smoothly outside the RTC systems,” the CEO of LTG Cargo, Eglė Šimė, said.
For international transport, in systems affected by the Russian regulation, redundant data, such as wagon technical data or cargo information, currently have to be provided. With the success of the test run without interfacing with RTC systems, LTG Cargo will strive for simpler and more efficient processes that are common in Europe. For example, the company’s Europe-wide certificate as a maintainer assures the rail infrastructure manager in another country that its maintenance and control of the rolling stock is adequate, making it unnecessary to provide detailed wagon technical data for each shipment.
“By rejecting any Russian rules, standards or technologies and replacing them with European ones, we are strengthening the integration of broad-gauge railways into the European rail system. The transfer of European solutions and rules to the broad-gauge system increases the resilience of railways not only in Lithuania, but also in the whole Baltic region, to the influence of hostile countries,” the Chief Resilience Officer at LTG Group, Gediminas Šečkus, said.
The Muuga Harbour is the largest cargo port in Estonia, located on the coast of the Gulf of Finland and in 2024, the port handled 2.1 million tonnes of containerised cargo. The test run involved transporting a container and a semi-trailer on flat wagons, as well as shunting the train set on the roads of Muuga railway station and one of the port terminals.
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