40,000 railway cars stuck at Ukraine’s border crossings

Freight cars lines at the border with the European Union continue to grow, reaching 39.3 thousand units on June 9, 2022, Rail.Insider reported citing Ukrainian state-run railway company Ukrzaliznytsia.

The number of cars increased by almost 2,000 compared to the data at the end of May. In particular, the number of grain carriers increased by almost 600 cars.

Most of the cars go in the direction of Poland through the Izov-Hrubieszów border crossing – more than 12.6 thousand units. In second place in terms of the number of accumulated trains is the border crossing with Slovakia: Chop – Čierna nad Tisou – more than 8 thousand cars. About 5.5 thousand cars follow in the direction of the border crossing with Romania: Vadul Siret – Dornesti.

At the same time, Vadul-Siret holds the most accumulated grain carriers – 3.9 thousand units. The volume of freight wagon transfers to Romania remains low. As a result, border crossings with this country are the most problematic.

There are also difficulties at the Mogilev-Podolsky – Velchinets due to the lack of locomotives and locomotive crews at the Moldovan railway.

Since the beginning of the war, Ukrzaliznytsia has doubled cargo transportation to Poland in the zone of operation of the Volyn customs, GMK Center reported. If in February, on average, 644 wagons were processed per day in both directions. In May, the actual figure of wagons passed per day reached 1,320 units.

At the end of May, the Polish port of Swinoujscie shipped the first batch of 30,000 tons of Ukrainian iron ore. At that time, there were more than 50 thousand tons of iron ore in Ukraine in the warehouses of the enterprise. Raw materials were delivered to the port by rail.

In addition, in early May, exports of iron ore through the Romanian port of Constanta started. Cargo operator Comvex loaded about 35 thousand tons of Ukrainian raw materials.