Hector Rail
Hector Rail is a Swedish-based independent train haulage provider operating in the European rail transport market, operating 50 locomotives. The company provides locomotives and drivers to freight customers who need to have whole unit trains hauled between two places with a regular timetable. From start, the majority of the shareholders were the Høegh family from Norway, through Höegh Capital Partners. In September 2014, the company was sold to EQT Infrastructure II. History. Hector Rail ran its first train on 12 December 2004, and now operates around 5 million train-km a year in Sweden and Norway. It  began operating in Denmark and running trains from Sweden to Germany during January 2008. In 2009 Hector rail started to haul a passenger train, for Veolia. During 2016 Hector Rail took ownership of GB Railfreight after GBRF was purchased by EQT Partners. Between 2016-2019 Hector Rail operated Blå Tåget between Gothenburg-Stockholm-(Uppsala). In May 2021 Hector Rail began operating the trains for FlixTrain when they launched their services in Sweden. Locomotives. The company operates diesel and electrically powered locomotives: The first digit indicates the number of different electrical voltages supported, but 8 for diesel-electric and 9 for diesel -hydraulic. The second digit is the number of axles, hinting the tractive effort. Hector Rail previously owned 6 Class 161, ex NSB El 15 locomotives, but they were taken out of service in 2019 after deliveries of new Class 243 "Vectron" locomotives and were sold in 2020 to the Norwegian company Grenland Rail. In Media. The railway was featured in a 2018 episode of Mighty Trains, showing newly-acquired Vectron locomotives hauling lumber from northern Sweden to the Ostrand pulp mill in Timrå, Sweden.