A freight train carrying raw plastic materials from Gaziantep and Adana reached the Tekirdağ district Çorlu as part of the first uninterrupted domestic freight train journey connecting Türkiye’s European and Asian parts. The feat was made possible by utilizing the Marmaray tunnel.
The 400-meter-long train departed from Adana and carried goods weighing 1,300 tons in 32 containers. Materials that were unloaded at Çorlu station will be transferred overland to Asyaport in Tekirdağ.
It is planned to transport 25,000 containers annually when freight train services become active at Marmaray.
The company in charge of carrying out the freight train transfer project said, “We established Ömerli and Tekirdağ loading and unloading stations, Türkiye’s two most important railway projects. Our goal is to carry 250,000 containers (5 million tons) nationwide from 2020 onward, 25,000 of which will be crossing under the Bosphorus. The transport we actually carried out in 2019 is 2 million tons of containers in weight. We aim to contribute to the economy of our country and Directorate of Turkish State Railways by routing freight trains through the Marmaray’s railroad tunnels, one of the foremost transportation projects of Türkiye.”