Freight traffic also has its own unique breakdown service. Mechanics on SBB Cargo’s Mobile Repair Units repair locomotives and rolling stock on the spot. Day and night they ensure that the rolling stock is used to the best possible advantage.

Monday, 4 o’clock in the morning. Franz Studer, one of the Mobile Repair Unit’s staff based at Olten, gets a phone call. The head of a marshalling team has called to inform him that a shunter seems to have developed an electrical fault. On a siding near Wangen, wagons loaded with fresh goods are standing stock still. Nothing is moving and time is short. The goods are due at 5 o’clock on the dot at the wholesaler’s warehouse.

Only 40 minutes later Franz Studer and his colleague are on the scene. They are able to drive the Mobile Repair Unit’s service vehicle directly to the siding. Soon the expert mechanics diagnose the fault: a starter relay is defective and the locomotive’s engine cannot be started. Tools and spare parts are quickly brought from the service vehicle. After only a short time the fault has been repaired and the train rolls into the wholesaler’s warehouse on time.

On-the-spot repairs
SBB Cargo has set up a broad network of mechanical repair teams, Mobile Repair Units, to fix faults and repair defects as quickly as possible. Fully equipped service vehicles are based at nine locations throughout Switzerland: Basle, Olten, Biel, Zurich RBL, Rorschach, Lausanne, Brig, Bellinzona and Chiasso. Since last year the base at Busto Arsizio has been operational. SBB Cargo’s travelling workshops offer service similar to the breakdown services for cars run by the Swiss TCS or Germany’s ADAC. Max Roth, head of the Mobile Repair Unit at Olten, reports: ”The greatest advantage offered by our service is that locomotives and freight wagons and also track construction vehicles don’t have to be towed to distant workshops for repair.”

”Repairs were always carried out outside workshops,” says Max Roth. ”The mechanics grabbed their tools and took the next passenger train to the station nearest to where the breakdown had occurred.” From there they tramped along the tracks till they came to where the repair was to be done. Railwaymen always repaired rolling stock on the spot, however they lost a lot of time on the train journey and they could not take so many tools with them.

For this reason in the 1980s cars were purchased. The service vehicles, fully equipped with tools and loaded with spare parts, could then easily be driven to where they were needed. Since 1 July 2001 the travelling workshops have been called Mobile Repair Units and the whole system is being extended and improved systematically. Simpler repairs can be done on the track. So that through traffic is not held up defective trains are driven onto nearby maintenance pits (covered tracks for parking locomotives).

Cost saving
The travelling workshops have proved their worth. Costly and unproductive transfers to workshops are avoided and no longer necessary. Above all, customers benefit from the Mobile Repair Units. Priority is given to an optimal infrastructure and staff training. Thus repairs can be done on the spot and as cheaply as possible. For customers that means quicker and safer.