By Ashley Karen
The contract will include a 25km two-track railway to drive trains at 200kph and a catenary system, of which 18km will be inside the immersed tunnel itself and 7km outside the tunnel, on the Danish and German sides. The winner of the contract will be revealed in the spring of 2025.
This spring, Femern will tender a tunnel track and catenary contract for the 18km immersed road-rail Fehmarnbelt Tunnel being constructed between Denmark and Germany.
As estimated, the contract will be worth approximately €200 million. The passage via the tunnel on the fully electrified rail line is anticipated to last almost seven minutes.
Femern is a Danish planning corporation responsible for preparing the Fehmarnbelt Tunnel across the Baltic Sea between the Danish Island of Lolland and the German island of Fehmarn. The tunnel is said to contain a dual-track railway and a four-lane motorway. Femern ‘s work falls under a treaty between Denmark and Germany, signed in 2008. The proposed tunnel, along with upgrades to the surrounding infrastructure, will cut the travel times between Northern Germany and Scandinavia.
Fermen claimed that once the tunnel with its electrified railway is finished in 2029, it will propose a green “shortcut” for the rail freight and passengers’ transport to Europe. The seven-minute ride will avoid a 160km detour.
Earlier in December, Femern granted $43.2 million to the Spanish company Elecnor for a so-called “green transformer station” that will provide green power to the Fehmarnbelt tunnel’s installations and the railway line. Femern articulated at that time of the award that the tunnel’s electric train operations, motorway, ventilation, lighting and other systems will need a constant and reliable power supply. Therefore, the tunnel will have its transformer station near the Danish tunnel portal at Rødbyhavn.
The transformer station will be one of the most extensive buildings of its type in Denmark. It will provide power to the Fehmarnbelt tunnel’s railway and 10 km of the railway on the island of Lolland, plus the tunnel’s technical installations.
Jens Ole Kaslund, the technical director for Femern, explained that the contract specifies high energy efficiency prerequisites, and Femern A/S has specified that the transformer station should have the capacity to serve the electric means of transport of the future, including charging stations for electric vehicles.
Initial works on the transformer station started earlier in 2022. Elecnor will commence the transformer station’s construction itself in 2023 and will finish it in phases expected to be operational in 2028.
Moreover, last year, Femern granted a significant formwork deal to Doka.
