Klaus: It sounds harmless, but the windstorm that swept through France and Spain in late January 2009 left over 30 people dead.

It also left extensive material damage in its wake, affecting forestry in particular. A majority of the forests in southwest France were damaged, resulting in an unimaginable 50 million solid cubic meters of windthrow. The timber must be removed quickly to ensure that the forests can recover.

DB Schenker Nieten GmbH, forwarding subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn and specialist for transporting timber by rail, has taken on an important role. Together with DB Schenker Rail, it is organizing the transport of French windfall to customers in Germany and Austria.

“Over 200 block trains with up to 1,300 net metric tons of timber each have been involved in the clean-up since June 2009,” said Manfred Eberhardt, Managing Director at DB Schenker Nieten. “Ten trains with 24 cars each now travel weekly from Labouheyre, Aquitaine, to timber processing plants in Germany and Austria via Forbach/Saarbrücken.”

In addition, DB Schenker Nieten and the Swiss rail freight company SBB Cargo prepare two to three block trains a week for shipment to Swiss customers. The necessary infrastructure had to be created in the windthrow areas before the transports could begin.

“In close cooperation with the French infrastructure provider RFF, our French subsidiary ECR and SBB Cargo, we found suitable loading yards, which we first had to equip to meet the requirements of timber transport,” explained Eberhardt. In the windthrow region itself, a specialist from DB Schenker Nieten works closely with the timber loaders and railroad companies involved to ensure transports are as smooth as possible.

In addition to the block trains, the Spain Shuttle from ECR and DB Schenker Rail transports timber eastward four times a week. Eight to ten cars on average transport timber from Saarbrücken in the DB single car network.

To enable even more timber to be removed, DB Schenker Nieten also organizes block trains and car groups to remove timber that was shipped from Bayonne and Bordeaux to Rostock and Wismar. Around 3,000 to 3,500 metric tons were unloaded per ship, which will next be transported on DB Schenker Rail cars to consignees in eastern Germany.

“We established this complex transport system to remove large quantities of windthrow left behind by Klaus in just a few days in southwest France alone,” said Eberhardt. “According to current plans, the project will keep us busy well into 2010.”