Mixed or separate: megaflexible is the main thing

Kombiverkehr implements rail-rail transfers at Hannover Lehrte MegaHub

Hubs bundle shipments, megahubs bundle shipments extremely well, flexibly and sustainably. This is the idea behind the MegaHub system in Hannover Lehrte. Kombiverkehr has made this possible since April 2021 with its own range of transport services – and it is adding more economic centres to one of the biggest intermodal networks in Europe. The terminals of Ludwigshafen, Lübeck CTL, Baltic Rail Gate, Duisburg, München-Riem and Verona Interterminal have been linked to the rapid-transfer facility in Hannover Lehrte since April 2021. Others will soon follow.

There could hardly be a better location for a transportation hub for transit services in Germany. That’s because all the traffic meets up in Lehrte, whether from east to west or from north to south. Kombiverkehr runs services to countries including the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, France, Spain, Austria, Hungary, Greece and Turkey via the MegaHub in Hannover Lehrte and the national gateway terminals and docks in Ludwigshafen, Lübeck, Munich and Duisburg. Expansion stage 2 with connections to and from Berlin, Kiel, Hamburg, the Czech Republic, Austria, Poland, Sweden and Mortara in northern Italy is in the pipeline and partially developed.

The MegaHub in Hannover Lehrte functions as a central hub so that all the connected terminals can be linked to each other. This creates flexibility in terms of routes and strengthens eco-friendly, sustainable logistics chains. Apart from rail-rail transfers, the MegaHub is of course open to trucks for the delivery and collection of transport units.

Any forwarder whose shipments originate from or are bound for the region around Hannover Lehrte has immediate access to the whole of Europe, because other connected terminals in Germany act as important gateways and they function in the same way as the rapid-transfer facility. While it is not possible here to transfer transport units between incoming and outgoing trains in under three hours as is the case in Lehrte, thanks to its fully automated terminal system technology, transport units still switch trains throughout the day and night in Munich, Ludwigshafen or Duisburg in the same way as travellers on passenger trains, thus reaching their destinations in other European countries and even going as far as the Asian part of Turkey.

The bundling function of the MegaHub …

… can also be used by terminals in the northwest and northeast of Germany via short-distance feeder services. In future, locations with no block train service to a destination terminal will be the departure point for mixed trains carrying transport units for several destination terminals to Hannover Lehrte, where they will be loaded onto trains bound for a specific destination. Every terminal can thus be linked via Hannover with all the other connected terminals as well as additional satellite services via gateway.